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The Syntax of Natural Language

Michael Diercks
Pomona College

Beatrice Santorini
University of Pennsylvania

Anthony Kroch
University of Pennsylvania

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Diercks, Michael, Beatrice Santorini, and Anthony Kroch. The syntax of natural language, 2nd edition.
Claremont: Scholarship@Claremont. https://scholarship.claremont.edu/pomona_facbooks/50/

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2nd Edition

The Syntax of
Natural Language

Michael Diercks, Beatrice Santorini, and Anthony Kroch

 i

Published by the Claremont Colleges Library and Pomona College in Claremont, CA, USA.

The Syntax of NatuRal Language, 2nd edition © 2024 by Michael Diercks, Beatrice Santorini,
and Anthony Kroch.

Version 2.03
Compile date: December 31, 2024

Previous edition:
The Syntax of NatuRal Language, 1st edition © 2007 by Beatrice Santorini and Anthony
Kroch.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International

License. This license enables reusers to distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon the material in
any medium or format for noncommercial purposes only, and only so long as attribution is given
to the creator. See the link for detailed conditions of use of this material.

This textbook is Open Access and should never be purchased or sold; see the license above. It will
be subject to intermittent, iterative revision. The Publication Notes page offers details. Comments
welcome at michael.diercks@pomona.edu

Cover art (the wug parade) by Laura McLaren and Hannah Lippard. The wug character is a
product of the Jean Berko-Gleason’s (1958) language acquisition experiment.

Due to the impossibility of appropriate citation and acknowledgment (both of this work and the
research field it reports on), the authors do not grant permission for the use of this work to train
Large Language Models or other AI technologies.

This textbook was typeset using LATEX.

 ii

This book is dedicated to our past, current, and future students.

Preface

July, 2024
It may be of interest to record some of how the textbook in its current form came to be. In
what follows, Beatrice and Michael reminisce in turn.

Beatrice Santorini
In the early 2000s, I was assigned to teach the undergraduate introduction to syntax in the Lin-
guistics Department at the University of Pennsylvania. My appointment with the Department
provided half my salary, with the other half coming from research grants to Tony Kroch. Tony
was concerned that the teaching would encroach on his research time, and the syntax course
turned out to be welcome in this regard, since it was offered every year, so that any work on
course preparation in one year would yield dividends in the next, and indeed for the foreseeable
future. I already had notes that were online, so Tony proposed developing an online textbook
that would eventually reduce my class preparation time to zero. That sounded fine to me, and so
Tony and I met to discuss the content, and I made notes of those discussions.
The course at Penn was not intended to be an introduction to any particular type of syn-
tactic theory such as Minimalism or a history of recent syntactic theory. Rather, the aim of the
course—and thus of the developing textbook—was the usual one of presenting some basic results
of the field, along with related argumentation. We felt free to omit commonly used arguments
that we didn’t regard as compelling. There were no prerequisites to the course, so we resolved
trade-offs between descriptive and conceptual/explanatory simplicity in favor of the former. This
was notably the case with our choice of X-bar schema, where we adopted a “classic” three-level
schema relying on fairly traditional syntactic categories versus a two-level schema requiring more
abstract categories. In such cases, we would briefly lay out the trade-off for the benefit of both
students and instructors.
Our discussion of syntactic structure was framed in terms of so-called elementary trees
and three operations for combining them: substitution, adjunction, and movement. This ap-
proach was informed by a conceptual and a pedagogical consideration. First, in the 1980s, Tony
had worked with Aravind Joshi and Joshi’s students on applying Joshi’s Tree-Adjoining Grammar
(TAG) formalism to natural language, and the derivations presented in the textbook were inspired
by the formalism, though not consistent with it in every detail. Second, in connection with teach-
ing the general undergraduate introduction to linguistics, Tony had found that students would
Preface iv

build quite crazy structures that betrayed a continuing ignorance of basic syntactic principles. In
an effort to improve their understanding, he collaborated with a graduate student by the name of
Sean Christ to produce a program called the Trees program, which forced users to choose from
among legal structures (say, maximal projections of various syntactic categories) and to com-
bine them in specified constrained ways (say, using only the three operations above). Students
were still able to build incorrect trees if they set their minds to it (for instance, consistently right-
branching structures), but the worst excesses were checked. Since the Trees program had already
proved useful, we incorporated it into the textbook by writing exercises using it. The program
was actually more sophisticated than just described, and Tony wrote exercises for his graduate
syntax class where the program simulated (in a very simple way) native-speaker judgments with
respect to various phenomena (say, anaphor binding). The programming interface was not very
developer-friendly, however, and the exercises in the textbook never exploited the program’s full
capabilities. At one point, Tony also produced animations of derivations using structures built
with Trees. Eventually, with the transition to 64-bit technology, Trees became obsolete. Per-
haps some day it will be revived in a more developer-friendly and less infrastructure-dependent
incarnation.
When formulating exercises, we attempted to counteract the tendency for students to build
consistently right-branching structures by focusing on structural ambiguity, especially in the
early chapters. In an effort to help students to retain material from early chapters, we created
exercises that built on each other across chapters. Finally, we wrote exercises illustrating varia-
tion with respect to syntactic properties like headedness and verb movement based on historical
stages (and to a lesser extent, non-mainstream varieties) of English. The idea was to bring the im-
pact of various unfamiliar language properties home by using bona fide English varieties. Using
examples from other varieties of English also made it natural to enrich the discussion of syntac-
tic variation and change with reference to language contact, social and stylistic factors, and so
on.
Turning from issues to content to issues of distribution, it may be that Tony was thinking
of eventually bringing the book along with the Trees program to market with a conventional
publisher to offset the uncertainty associated with soft money. There were discussions at one
point with an acquisitions editor from Harcout Brace. A few years later, Harcourt was acquired
by Houghton Mifflin, who did not pursue the project.
In any event, it is clear that Tony preferred a much less corporate route. He was always
looking for colleagues to contribute chapters on their fields of expertise, such as scrambling.
Sometimes, people both in the United States and abroad would ask us for permission to use the
book in their classes, and we were always happy to hear that it was useful to a broader community.
We were especially thrilled and honored when Caroline Heycock at the University of Edinburgh
used half of the chapters for a very professionally produced YouTube series on syntax.
Tony died in the spring of 2021, and in the fall of 2022, I began to worry a bit about what
to do with the material for the book, apart from leaving it up on my Penn website to decay more
or less gracefully. Less than a month later, entirely out of the blue, Michael Diercks contacted
me, inquiring whether I might be interested in collaborating on updating the book and turning
it into a professionally (but not corporately!) produced resource. Beyond the timing, there were
synchronicities involved that might have struck even Carl Jung as noteworthy. As an African-
Preface v

ist, Michael was particularly interested in developing resources for his colleagues in Africa and
for their students, and this fit nicely with the beginnings of Tony’s academic career in Sénégal,
studying the myths of the Bassari. Tony’s widow, Martha, was as thrilled as I was by this African
connection. She was even more thrilled by Michael’s concern for the equitable distribution of in-
tellectual resources, because anti-racism was the keystone of both Tony’s and Martha’s politics.
Finally, it turned out that our collaboration was keeping the book in the family, so to speak, since
Michael is an academic grandson of Tony’s via Raffaella Zanuttini. I find it almost impossible
to imagine a more suitable new home for the textbook than with Michael, his students, and his
librarian colleagues at Pomona, and I thank them all for the tremendous amount of work they
have put in to updating the book and the exercises. I am sure that Tony would agree wholeheart-
edly.

Michael Diercks
I have been troubled for years by for-profit publishing in academia: in linguistics, almost none
of this profit trickles down to individual authors, so any idea of merit-driven compensation is
either highly diminished or absent. And the effect (intended or not) is that our field ends up gate-
keeping knowledge. Beyond this being a problem generally, it is an extraordinary problem in a
field where many new insights come from research that specifically investigates the languages
of under-resourced and marginalized communities around the world. The end result is that the
very communities whose languages are under discussion often can’t access those discussions.
We are in an era of instantaneous distribution of information, but the most reliable and vetted
information (peer-reviewed scientific research) is often kept behind paywalls.
My own students at Pomona College are not among those who lack access to academic
resources while they are students with me, but the concerns still apply: I find it difficult to ask
them to pay for textbooks that, in my opinion, should be freely available. But when I work with
students and colleagues in Kenya and Africa more broadly, the paywalling of academic resources
becomes a much more acute problem. In exploring how to make resources available to students
within copyright laws, a college librarian gently asked me, “can you write your own textbook?”
I laughed: my current life would not allow such a thing. But a week later it snuck into my mind
that there already was a well-developed textbook out of UPenn; crucially, it was already Open
Access, so with the bold confidence of a mediocre white man I reached out to Beatrice to inquire
about what the future plans for the textbook were. After Beatrice considered the inquiry, I was
ecstatic to learn that we shared a vision and that this was a beneficial situation all around: I could
facilitate bringing the textbook into a new era, perpetuating its usefulness, and this would also
meet a current need in the field for Open Access syntax textbooks.
Together with a team of students here at Pomona College, I undertook converting the
HTML textbook to a more traditional textbook-style typesetting in 2023. At the same time Beat-
rice gave a first pass revision, resulting in a textbook that was used at Pomona College and the
University of Pennsylvania in Fall 2023. Based on these experiences, I undertook a more signif-
icant revision process in 2024. Beatrice and Tony’s main expertise is in Germanic languages; I
work mainly on African languages, and my research assistants (especially Xiaoxing Yu) brought
significant experience with prominent East Asian languages. A goal of the revision was to in-
clude more breadth of coverage in terms of the geography and typology of the languages that
Preface vi

are addressed in the main text and in exercises and problem sets. The hope is that the result is
a resource that can be used on its own for an entire curriculum, but which can also be used to
supplement curricula run with other textbooks, or without textbooks.
We made several other significant adjustments in the revision process. I added a new chap-
ter on locality of selection in syntax, and material was moved there from various other chapters
in the text. These changes required adjustment of details in the sequence of argumentation at
various point (including delaying introduction of VPISH until that chapter). Discussion of rela-
tive clauses was moved from the wh-movement chapter until later; this allows the wh-movement
chapter to focus on clause-level effects, additional kinds of A′ -movement, and to spend appropri-
ate time on the theoretical shifts in that chapter (specifically, X◦ and XP movement). At various
points (e.g. regarding X′ -syntax, island effects, agreement/case, and others) the revised text takes
an intermediate stance between traditional Principles and Parameters / GB approach and a more
modern Minimalist approach. Some of the first edition choices (e.g. elementary trees and sub-
stitution nodes) are retained despite not being canonical theory, largely because they are quite
useful pedagogically (as we explain at various points in the text). Part of the move towards more
cross-linguistic coverage meant reducing material from the previous edition; in some instances
this material was converted to problem sets, and in other instances we have retained the previ-
ous material to be included as supplementary readings in the Teacher’s Manual, which is still in
development as of this writing.
As Beatrice noted above, we share an academic history; she was trained by Tony, and I
inherited similar mindsets through Raffaella. We are deeply theory-informed within the gener-
ative framework, and this textbook thoroughly reflects that. But we also recognize that current
models will shift and change. Our opinion is that introductory students ought to have their atten-
tion directed to the most stable, consistent findings of our field. So the main goal of this second
edition, much like the first, is not to introduce current theoretical frameworks. Rather, our aim
is to provide an introduction to human language syntax, from a perspective that emphasizes
mental grammars (as opposed to solely surface empirical structures). This obviously requires
engaging a theoretical model, and the choice of our theoretical model is driven by our own ex-
pertise and research (broadly operating in the tradition that Culicover and Jackendoff 2005 refer
to as Mainstream Generative Grammar), but the theoretical model is not the main purpose of the
textbook. The result is a text that focuses on the most stable aspects of syntactic theory while
de-emphasizing new theory or theory that is in active transition. So while there are certainly ad-
justments from the first edition, there are also various ways that the textbook also does not reflect
active theorizing in the field as of 2024. There are strengths and weaknesses to such an approach,
but the hope is that it makes a useful textbook for undergrads or graduate students taking a sin-
gle course about syntax, but that a student having traversed this curriculum can make a fairly
straightforward transition to contemporary research practices if they move on in the field.
For the foreseeable future, I am taking over stewardship of the textbook. The goal is to
maintain and continue to develop an Open Access resource for education in natural language
syntax, rooted in the generative tradition. Future planned developments include additional exer-
cises/problem sets with appropriate cross-linguistic representation and a teacher’s manual with
an answer key, additional data handouts, and other supplementary materials for instructors. My
revisions were written based on my own pedagogical materials built over 15 years at Pomona
Preface vii

College, as well as based on my current expertise and experience. My hope would be that fu-
ture editions of the textbook (perhaps with additional co-authors?) would be able to continue
the trend of decentering English and Western European languages, both in exercises and in main
text. In the meantime, it’s my hope that this is of use to my own students and to whoever else
happens to find it along the way.
Acknowledgements

Many thanks to the following friends and colleagues for help with examples, judgments, and liter-
ature recommendations, for comments on earlier drafts, and for helpful discussion: Rajesh Bhatt,
Michel Degraff, Lars-Olof Delsing, David Embick, Chung-hye Han, Caroline Heycock, Sabine
Iatridou, Anne Jenner, Helge Lødrup, Eleni Miltsakaki, Kimiko Nakanishi, Peter Patrick, Don
Ringe, Maribel Romero, Peter Svenonius, Sten Vikner, Raffaella Zanuttini, Travis Major, and
Kang (Franco) Liu.
Of course, we alone are responsible for the use we have made of their help.
Thanks also to the students at the University of Pennsylvania and Pomona College, for
whom this book was developed.
Xiaoxing Yu and Charis Kim were largely responsible for converting this textbook from
its original HTML format to the current typeset form (with regular participation from Diercks).
They proofread carefully and made editorial and expository contributions. They also contributed
to some of the problem sets and answers in the Instructor’s Manual. Xuehuai He made major
contributions to updating the Instructor’s Manual.
Wug drawings (including cover art) are by Laura McLaren and Hannah Lippard. The wug
has become somewhat of an unofficial mascot of linguistics, and is a product of the Jean Berko-
Gleason’s (1958) language acquisition experiment.
In Fall 2023 the syntax classes at University of Pennsylvania and Pomona College read the
original reformatted and revised version of the text. Their questions and comments were very
helpful to preparing the published second edition.
Publication Notes

Notes on versioning
This textbook is published Open Access via the Claremont Colleges library and should be ac-
cessible through normal networks of Open Access textbooks as well as at https://scholarship.
claremont.edu/pomona_facbooks/50/. It is published as the 2nd edition of the textbook, but is
specifically listed as a version that is an iteration of the second edition (2.xx). An upside of the
only-digital publication is that we don’t have to wait for larger publication runs in order to cor-
rect issues around typos and other kinds of copy-editing issues. We expect to be making minor
revisions to the textbook with some frequency; these will be limited to copy-editing corrections
for both text and data/trees/images, revisions for clarity (especially in problem sets and exercises,
as we receive feedback from students from different places), and potentially adding exercises and
problem sets.
We will borrow from the standard conventions of software versioning for any revisions;
we will iterate the decimal, so subsequent revisions will be published as 2.02, 2.03, etc. All such
changes will be annotated here with dates of the revision and with explanations of any changes.
The expectation is that a syntax course should be able to run with participants using different
versions, with the only changes of substance most likely being small changes to pagination or
section numbering. Any such changes will be annotated with careful notes in the publication
history below. But new versions will always be Open Access, so it is recommended that courses
be run using the most recent version of the text.
Assuming an eventual third edition, that will be published as version 3.01, and versions
will iterate from there.

Publication history
• First Edition, published online at https://www.ling.upenn.edu/~beatrice/syntax-textbook/.
• Second Edition, published online at https://scholarship.claremont.edu/pomona_facbooks/
50/.
– Version 2.01, distributed informally in June 2024
– Version 2.02, distributed informally in July 2024
– Version 2.03, published via Scholarship @ Claremont by the Claremont Colleges Li-
brary in January 2025
Contents

Preface iii

Acknowledgements viii

Publication Notes ix

1 Foundational issues 1
1.1 Prescriptive versus descriptive grammar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.2 Rule formation and syntactic structure in language acquisition . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1.2.1 A thought experiment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
1.2.2 Rule-based word formation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
1.2.3 Question formation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
1.3 More evidence for syntactic structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
1.3.1 Intuitions about words belonging together . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
1.3.2 Structural ambiguity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
1.4 Universal Grammar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
1.4.1 Introducing Universal Grammar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
1.4.2 Formal universals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
1.4.3 Recursion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
1.4.4 Parameters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
1.5 Generative grammar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
1.5.1 Elementary trees and substitution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
1.5.2 Grammaticality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
1.5.3 Grammar versus language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
1.6 Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
1.7 Exercises and problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

2 Grammatical categories 40
2.1 Introduction to grammatical categories (parts of speech) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
2.1.1 Lexical and functional categories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
2.1.2 Open and closed classes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
2.2 The trouble with “words” and “parts of speech” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
Contents xi

2.3 Major lexical categories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48

2.3.1 Nouns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
2.3.2 Verbs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
2.3.3 Adjectives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
2.3.4 Adverbs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
2.4 Major functional categories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
2.5 Abstract categories: Inflection as a case study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
2.5.1 Modals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
2.5.2 Auxiliary verbs in English . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
2.5.3 Inflection as a grammatical category . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
2.6 On the (non-)universality of grammatical categories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
2.7 Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
2.8 Exercises and problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
2.9 Appendix: Finiteness in English . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
2.9.1 Verb forms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
2.9.2 Finiteness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90

3 Constituency and hierarchical structure 93

3.1 Tests for determining syntactic constituenthood . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
3.1.1 Substitution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
3.1.2 Movement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
3.1.3 Questions and short answers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
3.1.4 It-clefts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
3.2 Some complications for constituency diagnostics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
3.2.1 Mismatches between syntactic structure and other structure . . . . . . . . 98
3.2.2 False negative results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
3.2.3 Relevant diagnostics, to be used with caution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
3.3 Representing syntactic constituenthood . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
3.3.1 A case study: The existence of verb phrases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
3.3.2 Trees versus brackets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
3.3.3 Basic terms and relations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
3.3.4 Derived terms and relations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
3.4 Regarding scientific models . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116
3.5 Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118
3.6 Exercises and problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120

4 Some basic linguistic relations 131

4.1 Predicates and arguments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132
4.1.1 Semantic arguments of predicates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132
4.1.2 Aristotelian versus Fregean predicates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
4.1.3 Valency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
4.2 Modification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
4.3 Thematic roles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
4.3.1 Agent, cause, and instrument . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140
4.3.2 Experiencer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140
Contents xii

4.3.3 Recipient . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141

4.3.4 Location, path, and goal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
4.3.5 Measure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142
4.3.6 Theme . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142
4.3.7 Intermediate summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142
4.4 Grammatical relations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
4.4.1 Subjects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
4.4.2 Indirect objects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144
4.4.3 Direct objects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144
4.4.4 Distinguishing properties of grammatical relations . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144
4.5 Special cases of predicates and arguments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
4.5.1 The subject requirement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
4.5.2 Nonfinite clauses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150
4.5.3 Small clauses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
4.5.4 Imperatives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152
4.6 Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
4.7 Exercises and problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154

5 Introducing the X′ schema of phrase structure 172

5.1 The X′ schema for elementary trees . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
5.1.1 Transitive elementary trees . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
5.1.2 The X′ schema . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176
5.2 Deriving sentences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178
5.2.1 Verb phrases, transitive and intransitive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178
5.2.2 Simple sentences with Inflection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
5.2.3 Complex sentences and complementizers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183
5.2.4 Expected structures of sentences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185
5.3 The adjunct relation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186
5.3.1 Modification is different . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186
5.3.2 The need for an adjunction operation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188
5.4 Distinguishing syntactic dependents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191
5.4.1 A typology of syntactic dependents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191
5.4.2 Diagnosing complements and adjuncts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192
5.5 Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195
5.6 Exercises and problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196

6 Extending the X′ schema 203

6.1 Noun phrases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204
6.1.1 Parallels and differences between noun phrases and sentences . . . . . . . 204
6.1.2 Noun phrases as DPs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205
6.1.3 More on determiners . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 210
6.1.4 Modification and related issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215
6.2 Adjective phrases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 222
6.3 Prepositional phrases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223
6.3.1 Transitivity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 224
Contents xiii

6.3.2 Clausal complements of prepositions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225

6.4 Crosslinguistic variation in headedness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227
6.4.1 Head-final and head-initial patterns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 228
6.4.2 Harmonic and disharmonic headedness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231
6.5 Encountering new grammatical categories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233
6.6 Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235
6.7 Exercises and problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 238

7 Locality of selection 255

7.1 What is selection? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 256
7.2 VP-Internal Subject Hypothesis (VPISH) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 259
7.2.1 Verbs place selectional restrictions on subjects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 260
7.2.2 Subjects inside of small clauses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261
7.2.3 Floating quantifiers show a low position for subjects . . . . . . . . . . . . 262
7.2.4 Low subjects in progressive presentational constructions . . . . . . . . . . 263
7.2.5 A summary of VPISH . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 264
7.3 Selection is a lexical property . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 264
7.3.1 What makes up lexical knowledge? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 264
7.3.2 Syntactic heads make up lexical knowledge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265
7.3.3 Elementary trees as a tool to represent lexical knowledge . . . . . . . . . 267
7.4 Selection is local . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 268
7.4.1 Conceptual rationale for locality of selection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 268
7.4.2 Empirical motivations for locality of selection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 268
7.4.3 Lessons about selection from idioms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 269
7.5 Resolving apparent non-locality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273
7.5.1 Wh-movement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 274
7.5.2 The positions of subjects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 274
7.5.3 Passive sentences involve movement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275
7.6 VSO: An additional argument for VPISH (and UTAH) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 278
7.6.1 Deriving VSO word order . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 279
7.6.2 Theta roles have consistent positions in VP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 280
7.7 Conclusion: Selection is local . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 281
7.8 Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283
7.9 Exercises and problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283

8 Wh-questions: An instance of A′ -movement 292

8.1 Basic descriptive terminology for types of questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 293
8.1.1 Yes-no versus wh-questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 293
8.1.2 Direct versus indirect questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 293
8.1.3 Information questions versus echo questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 294
8.2 A movement analysis of questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295
8.2.1 Indirect questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295
8.2.2 Direct questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 300
8.3 Features in syntax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 305
8.3.1 C heads and the force of clauses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 305
Contents xiv

8.3.2 Feature-driven operations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 307

8.4 Wh-like movement that is not wh- . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 309
8.4.1 Focus constructions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 309
8.4.2 Topicalization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 312
8.4.3 Movement to non-argument positions (A′ -movement) . . . . . . . . . . . 313
8.5 Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 315
8.6 Exercises and problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 316

9 Feature valuation: Case and agreement 329

9.1 A first look at case . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 330
9.1.1 The basic functions of case . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 330
9.1.2 Inherent case and structural case . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 333
9.2 Case-features . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 335
9.3 Case-feature valuation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 337
9.3.1 The head-to-complement configuration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 338
9.3.2 The head-to-specifier configuration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 341
9.3.3 The head-to-subpart-of-complement configuration . . . . . . . . . . . . . 345
9.4 The Agree operation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 347
9.4.1 Agreement in morphosyntax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 347
9.4.2 Agreement via Agree . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 349
9.4.3 Case via Agree . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 352
9.4.4 Agree and movement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 355
9.5 Different case/agreement alignments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 356
9.6 State of the conceptual architecture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 358
9.7 Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 360
9.8 Exercises and problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 361

10 A-movement of subjects: Passives and more 372

10.1 A-movement of subjects in transitives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 373
10.2 Characteristics of the passive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 375
10.3 A movement analysis of the passive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 377
10.3.1 Passive of simple sentences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 377
10.3.2 Passive of ECM sentences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 380
10.3.3 Evidence for A-movement in passives: selectional restrictions . . . . . . . 383
10.4 Distinguishing active and passive sentences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 383
10.5 Unaccusatives: Inherently passive predicates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 385
10.6 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 388
10.7 Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 389
10.8 Exercises and problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 390

11 Subject control versus raising 395

11.1 Overviewing complement clauses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 396
11.2 Subject control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 398
11.2.1 Evidence for two clauses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 398
11.2.2 Deriving subject control sentences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 399
Contents xv

11.3 Raising . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 402

11.3.1 A “what if” detour . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 402
11.3.2 Nonthematic subject positions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 403
11.3.3 Deriving raising sentences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 404
11.4 More nonthematic subjects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 407
11.4.1 Subject idiom chunks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 408
11.4.2 Weather it . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 409
11.4.3 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 409
11.5 Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 411
11.6 Exercises and problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 412

12 The verb raising parameter 417

12.1 Verb raising: V moves to I in the syntax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 418
12.1.1 The future tense in French . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 418
12.1.2 The order of diagnostic adverbs and verbs in French . . . . . . . . . . . . 421
12.2 Tense lowering: I lowers to V in the morphology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 426
12.2.1 The order of diagnostic adverbs and verbs in English . . . . . . . . . . . . 426
12.2.2 Do-support in English . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 427
12.3 The loss of verb raising in Scandinavian . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 432
12.4 Differences in verb movement within a language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 435
12.5 Verb raising cross-linguistically . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 436
12.5.1 Verb raising with VSO word order . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 437
12.5.2 Verb raising in an agglutinative SVO language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 439
12.5.3 Verb raising and changes in word order . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 440
12.6 Adverbs: a side comment that is also the main point . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 442
12.7 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 445
12.8 Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 447
12.9 Exercises and problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 448

13 Decomposing VP and CP 463

13.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 464
13.2 Decomposing VP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 465
13.2.1 The causative alternation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 465
13.2.2 Applicatives as an introduction to ditransitive structure . . . . . . . . . . 467
13.2.3 Applicatives in English . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 469
13.2.4 Little vP in monotransitive sentences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 470
13.2.5 The decomposition of lexical ditransitives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 471
13.2.6 The status of UTAH . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 472
13.3 Additional evidence for decomposition of VP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 473
13.3.1 Decomposition of VP matches facts from idioms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 474
13.3.2 Decomposition of VP matches facts from adverbial modification . . . . . . 475
13.4 Case in ditransitive sentences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 477
13.4.1 Licensing objects in transitives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 477
13.4.2 Licensing objects in ditransitives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 479
13.4.3 Licensing objects in unaccusatives/inchoatives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 480
Contents xvi

13.5 Decomposing lexical ditransitive predicates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 481

13.6 Decomposing CP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 485
13.7 Conclusion: exploding projections everywhere? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 488
13.8 Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 490
13.9 Exercises and problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 492

14 Additional properties of A′ -movement 499

14.1 Relative clauses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 500
14.1.1 Wh-relative clauses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 500
14.1.2 That relative clauses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 502
14.1.3 Zero relative clauses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 503
14.1.4 Doubly marked relative clauses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 504
14.2 Constraints on movement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 505
14.2.1 Islands for movement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 506
14.2.2 Explaining (some) constraints on movement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 509
14.2.3 Open questions: explaining other islands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 512
14.2.4 Takeaway lessons from constraints on movement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 512
14.3 Wh-in-situ: wh-questions without wh-movement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 513
14.3.1 Wh-scope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 513
14.3.2 Wh-in situ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 513
14.4 A Copy Theory of Movement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 515
14.4.1 A Copy Theory of Movement for wh-in-situ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 515
14.4.2 Pronouncing multiple copies in wh-movement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 516
14.4.3 Partial wh-movement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 517
14.4.4 Resumptive pronouns as pronunciation of multiple copies . . . . . . . . . 517
14.4.5 Pronoun copying in A′ -movement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 518
14.4.6 Child English . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 520
14.5 Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 521
14.6 Exercises and problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 523

15 Binding theory 537

15.1 Reference and related notions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 538
15.1.1 Reference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 538
15.1.2 Coreference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 539
15.1.3 Coindexing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 539
15.2 The puzzle: restrictions on coreference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 540
15.3 Reintroducing c-command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 541
15.4 Chomsky’s (1981) Binding Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 544
15.4.1 Principle A . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 544
15.4.2 Principle B . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 548
15.4.3 Principle C . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 549
15.5 Binding Theory as a diagnostic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 551
15.5.1 Ditransitives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 552
15.5.2 Distinguishing movement types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 555
15.6 Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 557
Contents xvii

15.7 Exercises and problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 557

Glossary 560

References 584
 1
Foundational issues

Chapter outline
1.1 Prescriptive versus descriptive grammar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.2 Rule formation and syntactic structure in language acquisition . . . . . . . . . . 6
1.2.1 A thought experiment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
1.2.2 Rule-based word formation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
1.2.3 Question formation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
1.3 More evidence for syntactic structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
1.3.1 Intuitions about words belonging together . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
1.3.2 Structural ambiguity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
1.4 Universal Grammar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
1.4.1 Introducing Universal Grammar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
1.4.2 Formal universals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
1.4.3 Recursion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
1.4.4 Parameters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
1.5 Generative grammar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
1.5.1 Elementary trees and substitution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
1.5.2 Grammaticality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
1.5.3 Grammar versus language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
1.6 Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
1.7 Exercises and problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
Chapter 1: Foundational issues 2

Prescriptive versus descriptive grammar 1.1

This book is an introduction to generative grammar from a Chomskyan perspective. By the time
you finish this chapter, you will have a clearer understanding of what we mean by this sentence,
and by the time you finish the entire book, your understanding of it will be clearer and deeper still.
But for the moment, you have probably gained the impression that this book is about grammar
of some sort. And right there, we have a problem. The problem is that there is an everyday sense
of the term “grammar” and a quite different sense in which the term is used in linguistics.
In the everyday sense, “grammar” refers to a collection of rules concerning what counts as
socially acceptable and unacceptable language use. Some of these rules, like the ones in (1), make
reference to particular words and apply to both spoken and written language.

(1) a. Don’t use ain’t.

b. Don’t use seen as the past tense of see (as in I seen him at the party last night).

But mainly, the rules in question concern the proper composition of sentences in written
language. You may recall being taught rules at school like those in (2).

(2) Selected prescriptive grammatical rules for English

a. Don’t end a sentence with a linking verb.
b. Don’t end a sentence with a preposition.
c. Don’t split infinitives.
d. Don’t start a sentence with a conjunction.
e. Don’t use a plural pronoun to refer back to a singular noun like everyone, no-one,
someone, and the like.
f. Don’t use an object pronoun for a subject pronoun in a conjoined subject.
g. Don’t use contractions.
h. Don’t use dangling participles.
i. Don’t use sentence fragments.
j. Use whom, not who, as the object of a verb or preposition.

Someone who composes sentences in accordance with rules like those in (2) is said to have
“good grammar”, whereas someone said to have “bad grammar” doesn’t apply the rules when
they ought to be applied1 and so produces sentences like (3).

(3) a. Over there is the guy who I went to the party with. violates (2b), (2j)
b. Bill and me went to the store. violates (2f)

From the amount of attention that people devote to rules like those in (1) and (2), it is easy
to get the impression that they are the only linguistic rules there are. But it is also easy to see
Chapter 1: Foundational issues 3

that that can’t be so. The reason is that even people who don’t follow the rules in (1) and (2) don’t
produce rampantly variable, confusing word salad. For instance, even people who invariably
produce sentences like (3) do not produce the likes of (4).

(4) a. Over there is guy the who I went to party the with.
b. Over there is the who I went to the party with guy.
c. Bill and me the store to went.

The sentences in (3) may be instances of “bad grammar” in the sense of the term “grammar”
that is often used in English classes in elementary and secondary school. But they are nonetheless
still English sentences that people will readily say in conversation and will accept as possible
sentences in their language. By contrast, we don’t need to rely on school rules to tell us that the
examples in (4) are not English sentences—even though they contain exactly the same English
words as the sentences in (3).
Since native speakers of English do not produce a variable mishmash of words of the sort
in (4), there must be another type of rules according to which sentences are composed. We can
determine what some of them are by taking a closer look at the sequences in (4). Why exactly is
it that they are so clearly not an English sentence? In (4a), the article the is in the wrong order
with respect to the nouns that it belongs with, guy and party. In (4b), the relative clause (who I
went to the party with) is in the wrong order with respect to the noun that it modifies (guy). In
(4c), the preposition to is in the wrong order with respect to its object (the store). In other words,
the sentences in (4) do not follow the rules in (5).

(5) a. Articles precede nouns.

b. Relative clauses follow the noun that they modify.
c. Prepositions precede their objects.

Rules like those in (5) have a different intention than those in (2). The rules in (2) are pre-
scriptive; those in (5) are descriptive. Rules of prescriptive grammar have the same status as
rules of etiquette (like table manners or dress codes) or the laws of society, which divide the spec-
trum of possible human behavior into socially acceptable or legal behavior, on the one hand, and
socially unacceptable or illegal behavior, on the other. Rules of prescriptive grammar make state-
ments about how people ought to use language, and often they are framed as negative injunctions
(“Thou shalt not split infinitives”, on a par with “Thou shalt not steal”). In contrast, rules of de-
scriptive grammar have the status of scientific observations, and they are intended as insightful
generalizations about the way that speakers use language in fact, rather than about the way that
someone says that they ought to use it. Descriptive rules are more general and more fundamental
than prescriptive rules in the sense that all sentences of a language are formed in accordance with
them. Beyond this, most prescriptive rules have a classist and often racist foundation in the U.S.,
in that only certain dominant groups’ language counts as “standard” or “acceptable”, whereas the
language of socially marginalized communities is marginalized as “bad” grammar. More on that
later.
A useful way to think about the descriptive rules of a language (to which we return in more
detail below) is that they produce, or generate, all the sentences of a language. The prescriptive
Chapter 1: Foundational issues 4

rules can then be thought of social control: attempts to filter out as socially unacceptable some
(relatively minute) portion of the entire output of the descriptive rules. In syntax, as in modern
linguistics more generally, we adopt a resolutely descriptive perspective concerning language. In
particular, when linguists say that a sentence is grammatical, we don’t mean that it is correct
from a prescriptive point of view, but rather that it conforms to descriptive rules like those in (5).
In order to indicate that a sequence of words or morphemes is ungrammatical in this descriptive
sense, we prefix it with an asterisk. Grammatical sentences are usually not specially marked, but
sometimes we prefix them with a checkmark (✔) for clarity. These conventions are illustrated in
(6) and (7).

(6) a. * Over there is guy the who I went to party the with. (= (4a))
b. * Over there is the who I went to the party with guy. (= (4b))

(7) a. ✔ Over there is the guy who I went to the party with. (= (3a))
b. ✔ Over there is the guy with whom I went to the party.

That is to say, by saying that the sentences in (7) are grammatical, we are describing a psycho-
logical phenomenon that is automatic. Nobody who speaks Mainstream U.S. English as a first
language needs to be taught that the sentences in (7) are grammatical but the sentences in (6) are
not: everyone already knows this.
Prescriptive grammar is based on the idea that there is a single right way to speak. When
there is more than one way of saying something, prescriptive grammar is generally concerned
with declaring one (and only one) of the variants to be correct. The favored variant is usually
justified as being better (whether more logical, more euphonious, or more desirable on some other
grounds) than the marginalized variant that is being discriminated against. In the same situation
of linguistic variability, descriptive grammar is content simply to document the variants—without
passing judgment on them. For instance, consider the variable subject-verb agreement pattern in
(8).

(8) a. There’s some boxes left on the porch.

b. There are some boxes left on the porch.

In (8a), the singular verb is (contracted to ’s) agrees in number with the preverbal expletive
subject there (in bold), whereas in (8b), the plural verb are agrees with the postverbal logical
subject some boxes (in italics). The color and font of the verb indicates which of the two subjects
it agrees with. The prescriptive and descriptive rules concerning this pattern are given in (9). The
differences between the two rules are emphasized by underlining.

(9) In a sentence containing both the singular expletive subject there and a plural logical
subject …
a. Prescriptive rule: … the verb should agree in number with the logical subject.
b. Descriptive rule: … the verb can agree in number with either the expletive subject
or the logical subject.

To take another example, let’s consider the prescriptive rule that says, “Don’t end a sen-
tence with a preposition.”2 A prescriptivist might argue that keeping the preposition (in italics)
Chapter 1: Foundational issues 5

together with its object (in boldface), as in (10a), makes sentences easier to understand than does
separating the two, as in (10b).

(10) a. With which friend did you go to the party?

b. Which friend did you go to the party with?

But verbs have objects in the same way that prepositions have objects. By the reasoning expressed
above, verbs and objects should be resistant to being separated as well. But in (11a), where the
verb and its object are adjacent, is clearly preferable to (11b), where they are not. In fact, however,
(11a) is completely ungrammatical in English.

(11) a. * Adopt which cat did your friend?

b. ✔ Which cat did your friend adopt?

Beyond that, the prescriptive rule against sentences ending with prepositions is quite
clearly not a rule that is part of our mental grammars. This is illustrated by the (perhaps apoc-
ryphal) story about Winston Churchill’s response to this rule against preposition stranding:

(12) This is the type of arrant pedantry up with which I will not put.

(12) is an absurdly weird sentence: clearly, it’s not a rule of mental grammars of English that
prepositions can’t end sentences. The only way we can express that sentence is by stranding
both prepositions: a rule which I will not put up with.
It is important to understand that there is no semantic or other conceptual reason that
prepositions can be separated from their objects in English, but that verbs can’t. From a descrip-
tive perspective, the grammaticality contrast between (10a) and (11a) is simply a matter of fact
about mental grammars. (13) highlights the difference between the relevant prescriptive and
descriptive rule.

(13) When the object of a preposition appears in a position other than its ordinary one (as in
a question), …
a. Prescriptive rule: … it should be preceded by the preposition.
b. Descriptive rule: … it can either be preceded by the preposition, or stand alone,
with the preposition remaining in its ordinary position.

The contrasting attitude of prescriptive and descriptive grammar towards linguistic varia-
tion has a quasi-paradoxical consequence: namely, that prescriptive rules are never descriptive
rules. The reason for this has to do with the way that social systems (not just language) work.
If everyone in a community consistently behaves in a way that is socially acceptable in some re-
spect, then there is no need for explicit prescriptive rules to ensure the behavior in question. It is
only when behavior that is perceived as socially unacceptable becomes common that prescriptive
rules come to be formulated to keep the unacceptable behavior in check. For example, if every
customer entering a store invariably wears both a shirt and shoes, there is no need for the store
owner to put up a sign that says “No shirt, no shoes, no service.” Conversely, it is precisely at
illegal dump sites that we observe “No dumping” signs. In an analogous way, in the domain of
language use, prescriptive rules are only ever necessary to attempt to get people to stop using
Chapter 1: Foundational issues 6

language in a particular way. But if people are using language in a particular way, that means
those properties of their languages are real and exist, and can be described with a descriptive
grammar approach.
Notably, the rules of prescriptive grammar are only ever formulated in situations where lin-
guistic variation is common. But being prescriptive, they do not treat all of the occurring variants
as equally acceptable—with the result that they can’t ever be descriptive. So prescriptive rules
only ever exist to attempt to outlaw grammatical constructions that are in the mental grammars
of many speakers of a language. We can’t emphasize enough that the modern basis of a vast
amount of prescriptive grammar teaching around English in the United States is largely classist
and often racist: certain kinds of language have been deemed acceptable, and those deemed unac-
ceptable are those of social groups that have been marginalized in society. This is not to impugn
the motives of any particular English teacher: they are just doing their job as they have been
trained to do it. But a system has arisen that centers a particular variety of English and marginal-
izes a host of other perfectly legitimate varieties of English. Lippi-Green (2012) is a good first
resource on this topic, though students very interested in these social phenomena should take
a sociolinguistics course, which will cover these issues in much more depth. In the realm of
syntax specifically, the Yale Grammatical Diversity Project (https://ygdp.yale.edu) is an excellent
resource, as it provides linguistic descriptions of grammatical constructions that are often the
target of prescriptive rules.

Rule formation and syntactic structure in language

acquisition 1.2
As we have just seen, prescriptive and descriptive rules of grammar differ in their goals. In
addition, they differ in how they come to be part of a speaker’s knowledge. Prescriptive rules are
taught at school, and because they are taught, people tend to be conscious of them, even if they
don’t actually follow them. By contrast, we follow the rules of descriptive grammar consistently3
and effortlessly, yet without learning them at school. In fact, children have essentially mastered
most of these rules on their own by first grade. Ordinarily, we are completely unconscious of the
descriptive rules of language. If we do become conscious of them, it tends to be in connection with
learning a foreign language whose descriptive grammar differs from that of our native language.
In order to emphasize the difference between the unconscious way that we learn a native language
(or several) in early childhood and the conscious way that we learn a foreign language later on in
life, the first process is often called language acquisition rather than language learning.
As you consider descriptive rules like those in (5), you might not find it all that surprising
that a child raised in an English-speaking community would acquire, say, the rule that articles
precede nouns. After all, you might say, all the child ever hears are articles and nouns in that
order. (Hmmm, though, actually… see the note.)4 So why would it ever occur to such a child to
put the article and the noun in the other order? Isn’t it just common sense that children learn
their native language by imitating older speakers around them?
Chapter 1: Foundational issues 7

Well, yes and no. It is true that children learn some aspects of their native language by
imitation and memorization. Children in English-speaking communities learn English words,
children in Navajo-speaking communities learn Navajo words, children in Swahili-speaking com-
munities learn Swahili words, and so on. But language acquisition isn’t purely a process of mem-
orization. In fact, given current human life spans, it couldn’t possibly be!

1.2.1 A thought experiment

To see this, let’s consider a toy version of English that contains three-word sentences consisting
of a noun, a transitive verb, and another noun. The toy version contains sentences like (14) that
are sensible given the real world as well as sentences like (15) that aren’t, but that might be useful
in fairy tale or science fiction contexts.

(14) a. Cats detest lemons.

b. Children eat tomatoes.
c. Cheetahs chase gazelles.

(15) a. Lemons detest cats.

(“Secret life of citrus fruits”)
b. Tomatoes eat children.
(“Attack of the genetically modified tomatoes”)
c. Gazelles chase cheetahs.
(“Avenger gazelle”)

Again for the sake of argument, let’s assume a (small) vocabulary of 1,000 nouns and 100
verbs. This gives us a list of 1, 000 × 100 × 1, 000 (= 100 million) three-word sentences of the type
in (14) and (15). Numbers of this magnitude are difficult to put in human perspective, so let’s
estimate how long it would take a child to learn all the sentences on the list. Again, for the sake
of argument, let’s assume that children can memorize sentences quickly, at a rate of one sentence
a second. The entire list of three-word sentences could then be memorized in 100 million seconds,
which comes to 3.17 years. So far, so good. However, the minute we start adding complexity to
Toy English, the number of sentences and the time it would take to memorize them quickly
mushrooms. For instance, adding only 10 adjectives to the child’s vocabulary would cause the
number of five-word sentences of the form in (16) to grow to 10 billion (100 milion×10×10).

(16) a. Black cats detest green peas.

b. Happy children eat ripe tomatoes.
c. Hungry cheetahs chase speedy gazelles.

Even at the quick rate of one sentence per second that we’re assuming, the list of all such
five-word sentences would take a bit over 317 years to learn. Clearly, this is an absurd con-
sequence. For instance, how could our memorious child ever come to know, as every English
speaker plainly does, that the sentence in (17) is ungrammatical? If grammatical knowledge
were based purely on rote memorization, the only way to determine this would be to compare
(17) to all of the 10 billion five-word sentences and to find that it matches none of them.
Chapter 1: Foundational issues 8

(17) * Cats black detest peas green.

And even after performing the comparison, our fictitious language learner still wouldn’t have the
faintest clue as to why (17) is ungrammatical!
In addition to this thought experiment with its absurd consequences, there is another rea-
son to think that language acquisition isn’t entirely based on rote memorization—namely, that
children use what they hear of language as raw material to construct linguistic rules. How do
we know this? We know because children sometimes produce rule-based forms that they have
never heard before.

1.2.2 Rule-based word formation

One of the earliest demonstrations that children acquire linguistic rules, rather than simply imi-
tating the forms of adult language, is the wug experiment (Berko 1958). In it, the psycholinguist
Jean Berko Gleason used invented words to examine (among other things) how children between
the ages of 4 and 7 form plurals in English. She showed the children cards with simple line draw-
ings of objects and animals and elicited plurals from them by reading them accompanying texts
like (18).5

(18) This is a wug. Now there is another one. There are two of them. There are two .

(19) Wugs, for reference:

More than 75% of the children pluralized the invented words cra, lun, tor, and wug in exactly
the same way that adults did in a control group: they added the sound -z to the word (Berko 1958,
159–162).6 Since none of the children had encountered the invented words before the experiment,
their response clearly indicates that they had acquired a plural rule and were using it to produce
the novel forms.
Children are also observed to produce novel rule-based forms instead of existing irregular
adult forms (for instance, comed or goed instead of came or went). This process, which is known
as overregularization, is further illustrated in (20) (Marcus et al. 1992, 148–149; based on Brown
1973).

(20) a. beated, blowed, catched, cutted, doed, drawed, drived, falled, feeled, growed, holded,
maked, sleeped, standed, sticked, taked, teached, throwed, waked, winned
(Adam, between the ages of 2 and 5)
b. drinked, seed, weared (Eve, between the ages of 1½ and 2)

Overregularized forms don’t amount to a large fraction of the forms that children produce
overall (less than 5% in the case of past tense forms, according to Marcus et al. 1992, 35), but they
Chapter 1: Foundational issues 9

are important because they clearly show that even the acquisition of words can’t be completely
reduced to rote memorization.

1.2.3 Question formation

In addition to morphological rules (which concern the structure of words), children also acquire
syntactic rules (which concern the structure of sentences). Some of these rules are of particular
interest because they differ from the corresponding adult rules that the children eventually ac-
quire. At the same time, however, the children’s novel rules don’t differ from the rules of the
adult grammar in completely arbitrary ways. Rather, the children’s rules share certain abstract
properties with the adult rules, even when they differ from them.
To see this, let’s consider how young children form yes-no questions. Some 3- to 5-year-
olds form such questions from declarative sentences by copying the auxiliary element to the
beginning of the sentence, as in (21) (Crain and Nakayama 1987, 536). (We use the term “auxiliary
element” as a convenient cover term for elements that invert with the subject in (adult) English
questions, like forms of the verb to be or modals like can. See § 2.5.1 of Chapter 2 for more
details.)

(21) a. The girl is tall. → Is the girl is tall?

b. The red pig can stand on the house. → Can the red pig can stand on the house?

In the course of language acquisition, the questions in (21) are eventually replaced by those in
(22), where we can think of the auxiliary element as having been moved rather than copied.

(22) a. Is the girl tall?

b. Can the red pig stand on the house?

But now notice a striking indeterminacy, first pointed out by Chomsky (1971, 26–27). When
children produce questions like those in (22), there is no way of telling whether they are using the
adult rule for question formation in (23a) or the logically possible alternative rule in (23b).

(23) a. Adult question formation rule:

To form a question from a declarative sentence containing an auxiliary element, find
the subject of the sentence, and invert the subject and the auxiliary.
b. Logically possible alternative:
To form a question from a declarative sentence containing an auxiliary element, find
the first auxiliary element, and move it to the beginning of the sentence.

Both rules in (23) give the same result for simple sentences, which are likely to form most
of the data that young children attend to. Both rules also require children to identify auxil-
iary elements. However, the adult rule additionally requires children to identify the subject of
the sentence by grouping together sequences of words like the girl or the red pig into a single
abstract structural unit. Because of this grouping requirement, the adult rule is called structure-
dependent. By contrast, the alternative rule in (23b) is not structure-dependent, since it requires
the child only to classify words according to their grammatical category (Is this word an auxiliary
Chapter 1: Foundational issues 10

element?), but not to group the words into structural units. The rule in (23b) is simpler in the sense
that it relies on fewer, as well as computationally less complex, cognitive operations, and children
might reasonably be expected to experiment with it in the course of acquiring question forma-
tion. Nevertheless, Chomsky (1971) predicted that children would use only structure-dependent
rules in the course of acquisition.
As we mentioned, both rules give the same result for simple sentences. So how could we
possibly tell which of the two rules a child was actually using? Well, forming yes-no questions
is not restricted to simple sentences. So although we can’t tell which rule a child is using in the
case of simple sentences like (21), the rules in (23) give different results for a complex sentence
like (24), which contains a relative clause (who was holding the plate).

(24) The boy who was holding the plate is crying.

In particular, the sentence in (24) contains two auxiliary elements—one (was) for the rel-
ative clause, and another one (is) for the entire sentence (the so-called matrix sentence, which
contains the relative clause). A child applying the structure-dependent question formation rule
to (24) would first identify the subject of the matrix sentence (the boy who was holding the plate)
and then invert the entire subject—including the relative clause and the auxiliary contained
within it (was)—with the matrix auxiliary (is). On the other hand, a child applying the structure-
independent rule would identify the first auxiliary (was) and move it to the beginning of the
sentence. As shown in (25), the two rules have very different results:

(25) a. Structure-dependent rule:

[ The boy who was running ] is crying.
Is [ the boy who was running ] crying?

b. Structure-independent rule:
The boy who was running is crying.
Was the boy who running is crying?

Recall that Chomsky predicted that children would not use structure-independent rules,
even though they are (in some sense) simpler than structure-dependent ones. This prediction
was tested in an experiment with 3- to 5-year-old children by Crain and Nakayama (1987). In
the experiment, the experimenter had the children pose yes-no questions to a doll (Jabba the Hut
from Star Wars). For instance, the experimenter would say to each child Ask Jabba if the boy who
was holding the plate is crying. This task elicited various responses. Some children produced the
adult question in (25a), whereas others produced the copy question in (26a) or the restart question
in (26b).
Chapter 1: Foundational issues 11

(26) a. Is [the boy who was holding the plate] is crying?

b. Is [the boy who was holding the plate], is he crying?

Although neither of the questions in (26) uses the adult rule in (23a), the rules that the
children used to produce them are structure-dependent in the same way that the adult rule is.
This is because children who produced (26a) or (26b) must have identified the subject of the
sentence, just like the children who produced (25a). Out of the 155 questions that the children
produced, none were of the structure-independent type in (25b). Moreover, no child produced
the structure-independent counterpart of (26a), shown in (27), which results from copying (rather
than moving) the first auxiliary element in the sentence.

(27) Was the boy who was holding the plate is crying?

In other words, regardless of whether a child succeeded in producing the adult question in
(25a), every child in the experiment treated the sequence the boy who was holding the plate as a
structural unit, thus confirming Chomsky’s prediction.

More evidence for syntactic structure 1.3

We have seen that young children are capable of forming and applying both morphological and
syntactic rules. Moreover, as we have seen in connection with question formation, children do
not immediately acquire the rules of the adult grammar. Nevertheless, the syntactic rules that
children are observed to use in the course of acquisition are a subset of the logically possible rules
that they might postulate in principle. In particular, as we have just seen, children’s syntactic
rules are structure-dependent, even when they differ from the target adult rules. Another way of
putting this is that the objects that syntactic rules operate on (declarative sentences in the case of
the question formation rule) are not simply sequences of words (as if they were beads on a string),
but rather groups of words that belong together, so-called syntactic constituents.

1.3.1 Intuitions about words belonging together

Evidence for syntactic structure isn’t restricted to data from child language acquisition. Further
evidence comes from the intuitions that speakers, whether adults or (older) children, have that
certain words in a sentence belong together, whereas others do not. For instance, in a sentence
like (28), we have the strong intuition that the first the belongs with dog, but not with did, even
though the is adjacent to both.

(28) Did the dog chase the cat?

Similarly, the second the in (28) belongs with cat and not with chase. But a word doesn’t
Chapter 1: Foundational issues 12

always belong with the following word. For instance, in (29), dog belongs with the preceding the,
not with the following the.

(29) Did the dog the children like chase the cat?

Words that belong together can sometimes be replaced by placeholder elements such as
pronouns, as illustrated in (30).

(30) a. Did the dog chase the cat? → Did she chase him?
b. Did the dog the children like chase the cat? → Did the dog they like chase him?

Extra Info
Strictly speaking, the term ‘pronoun’ is misleading since it suggests that pronouns sub-
stitute for nouns regardless of syntactic context. In fact, pronouns substitute for noun
phrases (as will be discussed in more detail in Chapter 3). A less confusing term would be
‘pro-noun phrase’, but we’ll continue to use the traditional term.

It’s important to recognize that pronouns don’t simply replace strings of words regardless
of context. Just because a string like the dog is a constituent in (30a) doesn’t mean that it’s
always a constituent. We can see this by replacing the dog by a pronoun in (30b), which leads to
the ungrammatical result in (31).

(31) Did the dog the children like chase the cat?
↓
* Did she the children like chase the cat?

The ungrammaticality in (31) is evidence that the and dog belong together less closely in
(30b) than in (30a). In particular, in (30b), dog combines with the relative clause, and the combines
with the result of this combination, not with dog directly, as it does in (30a). (We will consider
the internal structure of noun phrases more closely in Chapter 6.)
In some sentences, we have the intuition that words belong together even when they are
not adjacent. For instance, see and who in (32a) belong together in much the same way as see
and Bill do in (32b). That is, who in (32a) and Bill in (32b) both refer to the entity that is being
seen.

(32) a. Who will they see?

b. They will see Bill.

Finally, we can observe that there are various sorts of ways that words can belong together.
For instance, in a phrase like the big dog, big belongs with dog, and we have the intuition that
big modifies dog. On the other hand, the relation between see and Bill in (32b) isn’t one of
modification. Rather, we have the intuition that Bill is a participant in a seeing event.
In the course of this book, we will introduce more precise ways of expressing and repre-
senting intuitions like the ones just discussed. For the moment, what is important is that we have
strong intuitions that words belong together in ways that go beyond adjacency.
Chapter 1: Foundational issues 13

1.3.2 Structural ambiguity

A particularly striking piece of evidence for the existence of syntactic structure is the phe-
nomenon of structural ambiguity. The classified advertisement in (33) is a humorous illus-
tration.

(33) Wanted: Man to take care of cow [ that does not smoke or drink ] .

The bracketed phrase is something known as a relative clause: a sentence that is embedded inside
a noun phrase, serving as a modifer of that noun phrase. Here, the ambiguity is about which noun
the relative clause modifies. World knowledge tells us that the intent of the advertiser is to hire a
clean-living man to take care of a cow. But because of the way the advertisement is formulated, it
also has an unintentionally comical interpretation—namely, that the advertiser has a clean-living
cow and that the advertiser wants a man (possibly a chain-smoking alcoholic) to take care of this
animal. The intended and unintended interpretations describe sharply different situations; that
is why we say that (33) is ambiguous, and not vague. A vague meaning is one that is non-specific
and perhaps hard to identify with precision: an ambiguous sentence is one that has two or more
interpretations, but they are all specific and identifiable.
There are parallels from other aspects of cognition distinguishing between ambiguity and
vagueness. A famous optical illusion is the famous duck/rabbit in (34), which can be perceived as
either a duck or a rabbit (the long narrow part is either the duck’s bill, or the rabbit’s ears).

(34)

This drawing originated from a German humor magazine in 1892, and was later brought
to broader awareness by Wittgenstein.

A similar example is a Necker cube, illustrated in (35). This image is visually ambiguous as to
it’s orientation; it can be perceived as having the lower left corner in the front (and the upper
right corner in the back), or the upper right corner in the front, and the lower left corner in the
back.
Chapter 1: Foundational issues 14

(35)

Source: Wikipedia, Necker Cube

Both of these examples are instances where the image is perceptually uncertain, but not
because it is indiscernable—instead it flip-flops between two different images in our perception.
This is notably quite different than blurry/vague image as in (36a), wherein the perception of the
image is simply imprecise as compared to the unblurred image in (36b).

(36) a. b.

Ambiguous sentences are like the two mutually exclusive perceptions of the optical illu-
sions in (34) and (35): the meanings themselves are precise, but there are multiple possible mean-
ings. Vague and imprecise meanings in sentences (like a blurry image) do exist, but are a separate
phenomenon (one residing in the domain of semantics/pragmatics, and not in syntax).7 So in (33)
the meanings aren’t mysterious, there are just two of them: a clean-living man or a clean-living
cow. Moreover, the ambiguity of the announcement in (33) can’t be pinned on a particular word,
as is possible in ambiguous sentences like those in (37).

(37) a. As far as I’m concerned, being any gender is a drag. (Patti Smith)
b. Our bikinis are exciting. They are simply the tops.
c. Atheism is a non-prophet organization.
d. They told me all of my cages were mental; so I got wasted like all my potential
(Taylor Swift, this is me trying)

Sentences like those in (37) are examples of lexical ambiguity; their ambiguity is based on a
lexeme (that is, a vocabulary item) with two distinct meanings. In (33), on the other hand, the
words themselves have the same meanings in each of the two interpretations, and the ambiguity
derives from the possibility of grouping the words in distinct ways. In the intended interpretation,
the relative clause that does not smoke or drink modifies man; in the unintended interpretation, it
modifies cow.
To avoid any confusion, we should emphasize that we are here considering structural ambi-
guity from a purely descriptive perspective, focusing on what it tells us about the design features
Chapter 1: Foundational issues 15

of human language and disregarding the practical issue of effective communication. As writers
of advertisements ourselves, we would take care not to use (33), but to disambiguate it by means
of an appropriate paraphrase. For the ordinary interpretation of (33), where the relative clause
modifies man, we might move the relative clause next to the intended modifier, as in (38a). The
comical interpretation of (33), on the other hand, cannot be expressed unambiguously by moving
the relative clause. If it were the desired interpretation, we would have to resort to a more drastic
reformulation, such as (38b).
(38) a. Wanted: Man that does not smoke or drink to take care of cow.
b. Wanted: Man to take care of nonsmoking, nondrinking cow.
The topic of our investigation in this book is not about editorial questions like when sentences
like (38) should replace sentences like (33), though the skills you build here will surely help with
editorial precision. Rather, our focus is on the more foundational issues: why does human lan-
guage have the characteristics that it does? For example, why do ambiguities like these only arise
in certain contexts and not others?

Universal Grammar 1.4

1.4.1 Introducing Universal Grammar

The field of syntax within linguistics is not simply interested in understanding the structure of
individual languages (though we spend a lot of time on that!). One of the reasons that linguistics
is situated in cognitive sciences (and not simply in the humanities, or in anthropology, or in the
social sciences) is that the structure of languages can give us insight into how human cognition
is structured more generally. It is not sufficient to describe the properties of a single language in
trying to understand the human language faculty (the part(s) of the mind/brain that is devoted
to language): instead we must attempt to understand what the universal properties of human
cognition are that allow any human language to arise.
Very obvious facts about the world can raise important questions about human nature. Any
neurotypical child (and neurodiverse children of many sorts, though not all) will learn languages
that are spoken by the community they are raised in. Particular languages are not genetic: I
may be genetically European, but if I am raised in South Korea among a community of Korean
speakers, I will grow up speaking Korean as a first language as fluently as any other member of the
community. If instead I was raised in the townships of South Africa, I would probably be speaking
Xhosa or Zulu. Hearing children of deaf adults will grow up fluent signers of the sign language of
their household, despite not being deaf themselves. Again, the point is an obvious fact about the
world, but it is highly significant: there are different languages, and children can (and will!) learn
any language that is used by the community that they are raised as a member of. What this means
is that the ability to acquire any human language is a genetic property of humans. But what is the
Chapter 1: Foundational issues 16

precise nature of that genetic property? Can humans learn literally any communication system?
Or do all human languages share specific properties and lack others?
A central puzzle of human language is that we appear to know more than we should about
language. Consider the examples in (39): in each of the first three examples, the bolded pronoun
can refer to the aforementioned Mike:8

(39) a. Mike loves his dog.

b. Mike’s dog loves him.
c. Mike believes that Lilly adores him.
d. Mike loves him.

Children are not explicitly instructed that the pronoun in examples like (39d) can’t refer to the
individual previously mentioned in the sentence. So why is it that all native speakers of English
know that the pronoun cannot mean Mike in (39d)?
This is a version of what Noam Chomsky refers to as Plato’s problem: how can we “ex-
plain how we know so much, given that the evidence available to us is so sparse?”9 (Chomsky
1986b, xxvii) This has been described as the poverty of the stimulus: the argument is that the
language data that children are exposed to while they are acquiring language is insufficient to
explain the level of detailed knowledge that adults have about language. Of course, children are
exposed to a vast amount of language data. But the point is that there are many aspects of men-
tal grammar that seem near-impossible for a child to arrive at based on the evidence they are
exposed to.
Noam Chomsky is an American linguist whose work in the 1950s and 1960s launched a new
kind of approach to studying language (generative grammar): this textbook describes a model of
human language that grew out of his work. Chomsky’s solution to the poverty of the stimulus
was to posit that all humans are born with a genetic endowment called Universal Grammar,
the genetic predisposition to develop a human language that has specific properties. Universal
Grammar obviously cannot be a particular language itself, but rather is the underlying ability
to acquire a language. The idea is that Universal Grammar has specific properties, so children’s
grammatical knowledge of language is in part driven by the particular language that they are
exposed to, but is also driven by Universal Grammar (UG).

(40) Universal Grammar (UG)

The universal innate cognitive mechanisms that generate human language, as discover-
able through language grammars.10

Universal Grammar is thought to facilitate language acquisition: by giving children innate expec-
tations about what language structures should look like, this effectively constrains the range of
possible hypotheses that children have to consider when acquiring a language, making it easier
to learn language. But this means that UG also predetermines human languages to some extent:
by hypothesis, the theory of UG says that human languages don’t vary endlessly, but rather there
are shared properties among all languages.11
The big project of syntax from this perspective, then, is to understand the properties of Uni-
versal Grammar. First, we work to understand the grammars of particular languages, but then
Chapter 1: Foundational issues 17

we ask what properties of language grammars do we see recurring in ways that are much too
common to be a coincidence? These are signs that these properties of language are driven by the
properties of human cognition in some way. Universal Grammar is the model, the framework,
that we theorize about in an attempt to arrive at specific claims about what the requirements of
human cognition are on human language grammars. We can therefore refer to the approach de-
scribed in this text as “Chomskyan” because it is describes the findings of the research community
that grew out of Chomsky’s proposal of UG.

1.4.2 Formal universals

We have noted above that the descriptive grammatical rules of syntax are structure-dependent,
that is, relying on hierarchical structure and not simply linear order. The structure-dependent
character of syntactic rules is a general property of UG, especially when considered in abstraction
from any particular language. There are two sources of evidence for this. First, as we have seen,
the syntactic rules that children acquire are structure-dependent (even when they are not the
rules that adults use). Second, even though structure-independent rules are logically possible and
computationally tractable, no known human language actually has rules that disregard syntactic
structure as a matter of course. For instance, (41) gives two examples of computationally very
simple rules for question formation, but no known human language has rules of this type.

(41) a. To form a question, switch the order of the first and second words in the corresponding
declarative sentence.
The girl is tall. → Girl the is tall?
The blond girl is tall. → Blond the girl is tall?
b. To form a question, reverse the order of the words in the corresponding declarative
sentence.
The girl is tall. → Tall is girl the?
The blond girl is tall. → Tall is girl blond the?

The structure-dependent character of syntactic rules (often referred to more briefly as

structure dependence) is what is known as a formal universal of human language—a property
common to all human languages that is independent of the meanings of words. Formal univer-
sals are distinguished from substantive universals, which concern the substance, or meaning,
of linguistic elements. An example of a substantive universal is the fact that all languages have
indexical elements such as I, here, and now. These words have the special property that their
meanings are predictable in the sense that they denote the speaker, the speaker’s location, and the
time of speaking, but that what exactly they refer to depends on the identity of the speaker.
Chapter 1: Foundational issues 18

1.4.3 Recursion
Another formal universal is the property of recursion. A simple illustration of this property is
the fact that it is possible for one sentence to contain another. For instance, the simple sentence
in (42a) forms part of the complex sentence in (42b), and the resulting sentence can form part
of a still more complex sentence. Recursive embedding is illustrated in (42) up to a level of five
embeddings.

(42) a. She won.

b. The Times reported that
[she won].
c. John told me that
[the Times reported that
[she won]].
d. I remember distinctly that
[John told me that
[the Times reported that
[she won]]].
e. They don’t believe that
[I remember distinctly that
[John told me that
[the Times reported that
[she won]]]].
f. I suspect that
[they don’t believe that
[I remember distinctly that
[John told me that
[the Times reported that
[she won]]]]].

1.4.4 Parameters
Formal universals like structure dependence and recursion are of particular interest to linguists
in the Chomskyan tradition. This is not to deny, however, that individual languages differ from
one another, and not just in the sense that their vocabularies differ. In other words, Universal
Grammar is not completely fixed, but allows some variation. The ways in which grammars can
differ are called parameters.
One simple parameter concerns the order of verbs and their objects. In principle, two orders
are possible: verb-object (VO) or object-verb (OV), and different human languages use either one
or the other. As illustrated in (43) and (44), English and French are languages of the VO type,
whereas Hindi, Japanese, and Korean are languages of the OV type.

(43) a. Peter read the book. English

Chapter 1: Foundational issues 19

b. Pierre lisait le livre. French

Pierre was.reading the book
‘Pierre was reading the book.’

(44) a. पिवत्र ने िकताब पढ़ी । Hindi

Pavitr-ne kitaab parh-ii.
Pavitr book read
‘Pavitr read the book.’
b. 漣が 本を 読んだ。 Japanese
Ren-ga hon-o yon-da.
Ren book read
‘Ren read the book.’
c. 현서가 책을 읽었다. Korean
Hyense-ka chayk-ul ilk-ess-ta.
Hyense book read
‘Hyense read the book.’

Another parameter of Universal Grammar concerns the possibility, mentioned earlier in

connection with prescriptive rules, of separating a preposition from its object, or preposition
stranding. (The idea behind the metaphor is that the movement of the object of the preposition
away from its ordinary position leaves the preposition stranded high and dry.) The parametric
alternative to preposition stranding goes by the name of pied piping,12 by analogy to the Pied
Piper of Hamelin, who took revenge on the citizens of Hamelin for mistreating him by luring the
town’s children away with him. In pied piping of the syntactic sort, the object of the preposition
moves away from its usual position, just as in preposition stranding, but it takes the preposition
along with it. The two parametric options are illustrated in (45).

(45) a. Preposition stranding: ✔ Which house does your friend live in?
b. Pied piping: ✔ In which house does your friend live?

Just as in English, preposition stranding and pied piping are both grammatical in Swedish.
(In Swedish, it is preposition stranding that counts as prescriptively correct! Pied piping is
frowned upon, on the grounds that it sounds stiff and artificial.)

(46) Swedish
a. ✔ Vilket hus bor din kompis i?
which house lives your friend in
‘Which house does your friend live in?’
b. ✔ I vilket hus bor din kompis?

In other languages, such as French and Italian, preposition stranding is actually ungram-
matical. Speakers of these languages reject examples like (47b) and (48b), and accept only the
corresponding pied-piping examples in (47a) and (48a).
Chapter 1: Foundational issues 20

(47) a. ✔ Dans quelle maison est-ce que ton ami habite? French
in which house is it that your friend lives
‘Which house does your friend live in?’
b. * Quelle maison est-ce que ton ami habite dans?
which house is it that your friend lives in
Intended meaning: ‘Which house does your friend live in?’

(48) a. ✔ In quale casa abita il tuo amico? Italian

in which house lives the your friend
‘Which house does your friend live in?’
b. * Quale casa abita il tuo amico in?
which house lives the your friend in
Intended meaning: ‘Which house does your friend live in?’

Therefore we can say that the order of verbs and objects is parameterized between lan-
guages; likewise, whether a language has pied-piping or not is parameterized between languages.
UG clearly cannot designate the order of verbs and objects, because this varies between languages
(similarly for pied-piping). Therefore UG is our theoretical notion that represents/captures the
principles of language grammar that are universal, and any point where there can be variation,
we claim that parameters of UG designate those options.

Generative grammar 1.5

At the beginning of this chapter, we said that this book was an introduction to generative gram-
mar from a Chomskyan perspective. Until now, we have clarified our use of the term “grammar”,
and we have explained that a Chomskyan perspective on grammar is concerned with the formal
principles that all languages share as well as with the parameters that distinguish them. Let’s
now turn to the notion of a generative grammar.

(49) A generative grammar is an algorithm for specifying, or generating, all and only the
grammatical sentences in a language.

What’s an algorithm? It is any finite, explicit procedure for accomplishing some task, be-
ginning in some initial state and terminating in a defined end state. Computer programs are
the algorithms par excellence. More concrete examples of algorithms include recipes, knitting
patterns, or the instructions for assembling an IKEA bookcase.
An important point to keep in mind is that it is often difficult to construct an algorithm for
even trivial tasks. A quick way to gain an appreciation for this is to describe how to tie a bow.
Like speaking a language, tying a bow is a skill that most of us master around school age and that
we perform more or less unconsciously thereafter. But describing (not demonstrating!) how to
Chapter 1: Foundational issues 21

do it is not that easy, especially if we’re not familiar with the technical terminology of knot-tying.
In an analogous way, constructing a generative grammar of English is a completely different task
than speaking the language, and much more difficult (or at least difficult in a different way)!
Take an English example as illustration: in English there are verb-particle sequences that
look highly similar, here run up and ring up, the latter meaning something like ‘to calculate and
process expenses at a register’.

(50) a. The children ran up the hill.

b. The server rang up the bill.

These two sentences appear surface similar (containing verbs following by the preposition-like
element up). But only in one of these sentences can the preposition-like particle be moved to a
position after the object:

(51) a. * The children ran the hill up.

b. ✔ The server rang the bill up.

Native speakers of Mainstream U.S. English know the facts in (51), though for most people this
knowledge is unconscious. The goal of generative grammar is to specify how and why it is that
(51a) is grammatical but (51a) is not. We do this via the rules, principles, and structures of human
language broadly (via principles and parameters of UG) and of the English language specifically.
Just like a cooking recipe, a generative grammar needs to specify the ingredients and procedures
that are necessary for generating grammatical sentences. We won’t introduce all of these in
this first chapter, but in the remainder of the section, we’ll introduce enough ingredients and
procedures to give a flavor of what’s to come.

1.5.1 Elementary trees and substitution

The raw ingredients that sentences consist of are vocabulary items. These belong to various
grammatical categories, like noun, adjective, transitive verb, preposition, and so forth. De-
pending on their category, vocabulary items combine with one another to form constituents,
which in turn belong to syntactic categories of their own. For instance, determiners (a category
that includes the articles a and the and the demonstratives this, that, these and those) can combine
with nouns to form noun phrases, but they can’t (or at least don’t ordinarily) combine with other
syntactic categories like adverbs, verbs, or prepositions.

(52) a. ✔ a house
b. ✔ the cats
c. ✔ those books

(53) a. * a slowly
b. * the went
c. * those of

It’s possible to represent the information contained in a constituent by using labeled

bracketing. Each vocabulary item is enclosed in brackets that are labeled with the appropriate
Chapter 1: Foundational issues 22

grammatical category. The constituent that results from combining vocabulary items is in turn
enclosed in brackets that are labeled with the constituent’s grammatical category. The labeled
bracketings for the noun phrases in (52) are given in (54).

(54) a. [NounPhr [Det a ][Noun house ] ]

b. [NounPhr [Det the ][Noun cats ] ]
c. [NounPhr [Det those ][Noun books ] ]

Noun phrases can combine with other syntactic categories, such as prepositions or transitive
verbs. Prepositions combine with a noun phrase to form prepositional phrases. A transitive verb
combines with one noun phrase to form a verb phrase, which in turn combines with a second
noun phrase to form a complete sentence.

(55) a. [PrepPhr [Prep on ] [NounPhr [Det the] [Noun table ] ] ]

b. [VerbPhr [TrVerb drafted ] [NounPhr [Det a ] [Noun letter ] ] ]
c. [Sentence [NounPhr [Det the ] [Noun secretary ] ] [VerbPhr [TrVerb drafted ] [NounPhr [Det a ]
[Noun letter ] ] ] ]

Noun phrases don’t, however, combine with any and all syntactic categories. For instance, they
can’t combine with determiners (at least not in English).

(56) * the this letter

As constituent structure grows more complex, labeled bracketings very quickly grow dif-
ficult for humans to visually process, as you may have experienced while looking at (55c). It’s
often more convenient to represent constituent structure with tree diagrams. Tree diagrams,
or trees for short, convey exactly the same information as labeled bracketings, but the informa-
tion is presented differently. Instead of enclosing an element in brackets that are labeled with a
grammatical category, the category is placed immediately above the element and connected to it
with a line or branch. The labeled bracketings that we have seen so far translate into the trees
in (57) and (58).13

(57) a. NounPhr b. NounPhr c. NounPhr

Det Noun Det Noun Det Noun

a house the cats those books

(58) a. PrepPhr b. VerbPhr

Prep NounPhr TrVerb NounPhr

on drafted
Det Noun Det Noun
the table the letter
Chapter 1: Foundational issues 23

c. Sentence

NounPhr VerbPhr

Det Noun TrVerb NounPhr

the secretary drafted
Det Noun
the letter

Continuing with the metaphor of ingredients and recipes, trees like those in (57) and (58)
resemble dishes that are ready to serve; they don’t provide a record of how they were brought into
being. We can provide such a record by representing vocabulary items themselves in the form of
trees that include combinatorial information. For example, prepositions and transitive verbs can
be represented as trees with empty slots for noun phrases to fit into, as shown in (59).

(59) a. PrepPhr b. Sentence

Prep »NounPhr« »NounPhr« VerbPhr

on
TrVerb »NounPhr«
drafted

We’ll refer to trees for vocabulary items like those in (59) as elementary trees. The pur-
pose of elementary trees is to represent a vocabulary item’s combinatorial possibilities, and so
they ordinarily contain unfilled nodes. We refer to such nodes as substitution nodes, and they
are filled by a substitution operation, as shown in (60). In this text, we will indicate substitution
nodes by enclosing them in inverted guillemets (» «). The guillemets “point” to the spot where a
node needs to be filled.

(60) a. PrepPhr b. NounPhr

Prep »NounPhr« Det Noun

on the table

(60a) has a substitution node of The root (topmost) node in (60b) has
some grammatical category. the same grammatical category as
the substitution node in (60a).
Chapter 1: Foundational issues 24

c. PrepPhr

Prep NounPhr
on
Det Noun
the table

Substitution occurs when the root

node of (60b) is identified with the
substitution node in (60a).

Elementary trees don’t necessarily contain substitution nodes, though; ones that invariably play
the role of (60b) in the substitution operation don’t. The elementary tree for the noun in (61b) is
an example.
Notice, by the way, that there are two conceivable ways to arrive at trees for noun phrases
like those cats, depending on whether it is the noun that is taken as the substitution node, as in
(61), or the determiner, as in (62). At this point, there is no reason to prefer one way over the
other, but in Chapter 6, we will adopt a variant of (61).

(61) a. NounPhr b. Noun

cats
Det »Noun«
those

(62) a. Det b. NounPhr

those
»Det« Noun
cats

Elementary trees and substitution nodes won’t be part of our final theory, but they are very
helpful in the early stages of building the theory. And as we will discuss in Chapter 7, they
are very useful ways to visualize the lexical (memorized) properties of specific words and mor-
phemes.
In summary, a generative grammar as we’ve constructed it so far consists of a set of elemen-
tary trees, which represent the vocabulary items in a language and the range of their combinato-
rial possibilities, and a substitution operation, by means of which the elementary trees combine
into larger constituents and ultimately into grammatical sentences. There is a lot more to be said
to create a generative grammar that can correctly predict all the grammatical and ungrammatical
sentences for any particular language, let alone all languages, but these are the pieces we will
start building from.
Chapter 1: Foundational issues 25

1.5.2 Grammaticality
As we mentioned earlier, the aim of a generative grammar is to generate all and only the gram-
matical sentences of a language. Since the notion of grammaticality is basic to syntactic theory,
it is important to distinguish it from notions with which it is easily confused. First and foremost,
‘is grammatical’ is not the same thing as ‘makes sense.’ The sentences in (63) all ‘make sense’ in
the sense that it is easy to interpret them. Nevertheless, as indicated by the asterisks, they are
not grammatical in Mainstream U.S. English.14

(63) a. * Is our children learning?

b. * Me wants fabric.
c. * To where are we be taking thou, sir?
d. * The introduction explained that “the Genoese people, besides of hard worker, are
good eater too, and even ‘gourmand’, of that honest gourmandise which will not
drive a man to hell but which is, after all, one of the few pleasures that mankind
can enjoy in this often sorrowful world.”

Conversely, sentences can be grammatical, but not ‘make sense.’ The ‘fairy tale’ or ‘sci-
ence fiction’ sentences in (15) are of this type. Two further examples are given in (64). Since the
sentences are grammatical, they aren’t preceded by an asterisk. Their semantic anomaly is indi-
cated by a prefixed pound sign (hash mark). Each of these sentences are presented with a parallel
(non-anomalous) sentence that has the same structure but is semantically acceptable.

(64) a. # Colorless green ideas sleep — cf. Revolutionary new ideas appear
furiously. (Chomsky 1965, 149) infrequently.
b. # I plan to travel there last year. — cf. I plan to travel there next year.

Second, ‘grammatical’ must be distinguished from ‘acceptable’ or ‘easily processable by

human beings’. This is because it turns out that certain well-motivated simple grammatical op-
erations can be applied in ways that result in sentences that are virtually impossible for human
beings to process. For instance, it is possible in English to modify a noun with a relative clause,
and sentences containing nouns that are modified in this way, like those in (65), are ordinarily
perfectly acceptable and easily understood. (Here and in the following examples, the relative
clauses are bracketed and the modified noun is underlined.)

(65) a. The mouse [that the cat chased] escaped.

b. The cat [that the dog scared] jumped out the window.

But now notice what happens when we modify the noun within the relative clause in (65a)
with a relative clause of its own.

(66) The mouse [that the cat [that the dog scared] chased] escaped.

Even though (66) differs from (65a) by only four additional words and a single additional
level of embedding, the result is virtually uninterpretable without pencil and paper. The reason
is not that relative clause modification can’t apply more than once, since the variant of (65a) in
Chapter 1: Foundational issues 26

(67), which contains exactly the same words and is exactly as long, is perfectly fine (or at any rate
much more acceptable than (66)).

(67) The mouse escaped [that the cat chased] [that the dog scared].

The reason that (66) is virtually uninterpretable is also not that it contains recursive struc-
ture (the relative clause that modifies mouse contains the relative clause that modifies cat). After
all, the structures in (42) are recursive, yet they don’t throw us for a loop the way that (66)
does.
(66) is unacceptable not because it is ungrammatical, but because of certain limitations on
human short-term memory (Chomsky and Miller 1963, 286, 471). Specifically, notice that in the
(relatively) acceptable (67), the subject of the main clause the mouse doesn’t have to ”wait” (that is,
be kept active in short-term memory) for its verb escaped since the verb is immediately adjacent
to the subject. The same is true for the subjects and verbs of each of the relative clauses (the cat
and chased, and the dog and scared). In (66), on the other hand, the mouse must be kept active in
memory, waiting for its verb escaped, for the length of the entire sentence. What is even worse,
however, is that the period during which the mouse is waiting for its verb escaped overlaps the
period during which the cat must be kept active, waiting for its verb chased. What makes (66) so
difficult, then, is not the mere fact of recursion, but that two relations of exactly the same sort
(the subject-verb relation) must be kept active in memory at the same time. In none of the other
relative clause sentences is such double activation necessary. For instance, in (65a), the mouse
must be kept active for the length of the relative clause, but the subject of the relative clause (the
cat) needn’t be kept active since it immediately precedes its verb chased.

Extra Info
Sentences like (65) and (66) are often referred to as center-embedding structures, and
the dependencies between the subjects and their verbs are said to be nested.
The mouse that the cat chased escaped.

The mouse that the cat that the dog scared chased escaped.

By contrast, the corresponding dependencies in (67) are not nested.

The mouse escaped that the cat chased.

The mouse escaped that the cat chased that the dog scared.

This remains true even if we focus on the dependencies between the relative clauses and
the nouns that they modify.
The mouse escaped that the cat chased that the dog scared.

A final important point to bear in mind is that any sentence is an expression that is paired
with a particular interpretation. Grammaticality is always determined with respect to a pairing
of form and meaning. This means that a particular string can be grammatical under one interpre-
Chapter 1: Foundational issues 27

tation, but not under another. For instance, (68) is ungrammatical under an subject-object-verb
(SOV) interpretation (that is, when the sentence is interpreted as Sue hired Tom).

(68) Sue Tom hired.

(68) is grammatical, however, under an object-subject-verb (OSV) interpretation (that is,

when it is interpreted as Tom hired Sue). On this interpretation, Sue receives a special intonation
marking contrast, which would ordinarily be indicated in writing by setting off Sue from the rest
of the sentence by a comma. In other words, the grammaticality of (68) depends on whether its
interpretation is analogous to (69a) or (69b).

(69) a. * She them hired.

b. ✔ HER, they hired. (The other job candidates, they didn’t even call back.)

1.5.3 Grammar versus language

We conclude this chapter by considering the relationship between the concepts of grammar and
language. The notion of language seems straightforward because we are used to thinking and
speaking of “the English language,” “the Hindi language,” “the Swahili language,” and so forth.
But these terms are actually much vaguer than they seem at first glance because they cover a
multitude of varieties, including ones that differ enough to be mutually unintelligible. For in-
stance, Ethnologue distinguishes 32 dialects of English in the United Kingdom alone. In addition,
distinct dialects of English are spoken in former British colonies, including Australia, Canada, In-
dia, New Zealand, South Africa, the United States, and many other African, Asian, and Caribbean
nations, and many of these dialects have subdialects of their own. Similarly, Ethnologue distin-
guishes 11 dialects of French in France and 10 dialects of Swahili in Kenya, and there are further
dialects in other countries in which these languages are spoken. Moreover, we use terms like “the
English language” to refer to historical varieties that differ as profoundly as present-day English
does from Old English, which is about as intelligible to a speaker of modern English as German
is—that is to say, it is not.
Although the most salient differences between dialects are often phonological (that is,
speakers of different dialects often have different accents), dialects of a so-called single language
can differ syntactically as well. For instance, in standard French, as in the Romance languages
more generally, adjectives ordinarily follow the noun that they modify. But that order is reversed
in Walloon, a variety of French spoken in Belgium. The two parametric options are illustrated in
(70) (Bernstein 1993, 25–26).

(70) a. un chapeau noir [Standard French]

a hat black
b. on neûr tchapê [Walloon]
a black hat
‘a black hat’

Another example of the same sort concerns multiple negation in sentences like (71a) in
varieties of English.
Chapter 1: Foundational issues 28

(71) a. The kids didn’t eat nothing.

b. The kids didn’t eat anything.

In present-day Mainstream U.S. English, didn’t and nothing each contribute their negative
force to the sentence, and the overall force of (71a) isn’t negative; rather, the sentence means
that the kids ate something. In many varieties of English, however, (71a) conveys exactly the
same meaning as in Mainstream U.S. English (71b); that is, the sentence as a whole has nega-
tive force. In these varieties, the negation in nothing can be thought of as agreeing with (and
reinforcing) the negation in didn’t rather than cancelling it; hence the term negative concord
for this phenomenon (‘concord’ is a variant term for ‘agreement’). Negative concord is routinely
characterized as “illogical” by prescriptivists,15 and it is one of the most heavily stigmatized fea-
tures in present-day U.S. English.16 However, it was productive in earlier forms of English, and
it is attested in renowned masters of the language such as Chaucer and Shakespeare. Moreover,
negative concord is part of the mainstream forms of languages like Afrikaans, French, modern
Greek, Hausa, Italian, Lubukusu, Moroccan Arabic, Nweh, Spanish, and Tarifit Berber (just to
name a few: see Bell 2004). From a descriptive and generative point of view, negative concord
is simply a parametric option of Universal Grammar just like any other, and negative concord is
no more illogical than the noun-adjective order in (70a) or preposition stranding/pied-piping. If
anything, marking negation multiple times in a sentence could have a clear functional (i.e. com-
municative) motivation, as it is important for a listener to note whether a sentence was negative
or affirmative.
In both of the examples just discussed, we have dialects of “the same language” (English
and French, respectively) differing with respect to a parameter. The converse is also possible:
two “different languages” that are parametrically (all but) indistinguishable. For example, the
same linguistic variety spoken on the Dutch-German border may count as a dialect of Dutch or
German depending on which side of the political border it is spoken, and the same is true of many
other border dialects as well. According to Max Weinreich, “a language is a dialect with an army
and a navy.” A striking confirmation of this aphorism concerns the recent terminological history
of Serbo-Croatian. As long as Yugoslavia was a federal state, Serbo-Croatian was considered a
single language with a number of regional dialects. The 14th edition of Ethnologue, published in
2000, still has a single entry for Serbo-Croatian. In the 15th edition, published in 2005, the single
entry is replaced by three new entries for Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian. What changed in the
meantime wasn’t the languages, but the political situation.
The notion of “a language” is based more on sociopolitical considerations than on strictly
linguistic ones. By contrast, the term “grammar” refers to a particular set of parametric options
that a speaker acquires. For this reason, the distinction between language and grammar that
we have been drawing is also referred to as the distinction between E-language and I-language
(Chomsky 1986b). E-language (external language) refers to the actual utterances and discourses
of individuals and communities—language out in the world. I-language (internal language), in
contrast, are the mental representations of grammatical knowledge that speakers possess. Gen-
erative grammar is concerned with I-language, not E-language; the theory of Universal Grammar
is an attempt to model what the possible and impossible I-languages are.
As we have seen, the same language label can be associated with more than one gram-
mar (the label “English” is associated with grammars both with and without negative concord),
Chapter 1: Foundational issues 29

and a single grammar can be associated with more than one language label (as in the case of
border dialects). It is important to distinguish the concept of shared grammar from mutual in-
telligibility. To a large extent, Mainstream U.S. English and many other varieties of American
English are mutually intelligible even where their grammars differ with respect to one parameter
or another: that is to say, two speakers of two different varieties of American English can often
understand each other reasonably well. On the other hand, it is perfectly possible for two or
more varieties that are mutually unintelligible to share a single grammar. For instance, in the
Indian village of Kupwar (Gumperz and Wilson 1971), the three languages Marathi, Urdu, and
Kannada, each spoken by a different ethnic group, have been in contact for about 400 years, and
most of the men in the village are bi- or trilingual. Like the standard varieties of these languages,
their Kupwar varieties have distinct vocabularies, thus rendering them mutually unintelligible to
monolingual speakers, but in Kupwar, the considerable grammatical differences that exist among
the languages as spoken in other parts of India have been virtually eliminated. The difference
between standard French and Walloon with respect to prenominal adjectives is another instance
of this same convergence phenomenon. Here, too, the adjective-noun order in Walloon is due
to language contact and bilingualism, in this case between French and Flemish, the other lan-
guage spoken in Belgium; in Flemish, as in the Germanic languages more generally, adjectives
ordinarily precede the nouns that they modify.
Finally, we should point out that it is perfectly possible for a single speaker to acquire more
than one grammar. This is most strikingly evident in balanced bilinguals. Speakers can also ac-
quire more than one grammar in situations of syntactic change. For instance, in the course of
its history, English changed from an OV to a VO language, and individual speakers during the
transition period (which began in late Old English and continued into Middle English) acquired
and used both parametric options. Speakers can also acquire more than one grammar in situa-
tions of diglossia or stable syntactic variation. For instance, English speakers whose vernacular
grammar has negative concord or preposition stranding might acquire the parametric variants
without negative concord or with pied piping in the course of formal education.

New Empirical Observations

Each chapter of this textbook introduces a range of new empirical properties of language,
that is, factual information about how human language syntax works. At the end of each
chapter we will summarize that chapter’s empirical contributions.
▶ All human languages (in both their formal and informal instantiations) follow con-
sistent rules without apparent effort, despite the fact that these rules often conflict
with externally taught “school grammar” rules (motivates the idea that we have
innate grammatical knowledge)
▶ Children acquire productive linguistic rules, rather than simply memorizing all the
linguistic knowledge they have.
▶ Fluent users of a language have intuitions (a.k.a. judgments) about whether a given
sentence or phrase adheres to the grammatical patterns of their language.
 Chapter 1: Foundational issues 30

▶ Linguistic rules (both adults’ and children’s) seem to be structure-dependent.

▶ Sentences may be structurally ambiguous, that is, the string of morphemes in a
sentence may be consistent with multiple different syntactic structures.

Components of the Theoretical Model

Throughout this textbook we will be building a scientific model of syntax. At the end of
each chapter, we will summarize what the current state of our model is and highlight which
concepts were newly added.
We are building generative grammars of languages, meaning that we are attempting to
determine the set of rules/structures that correctly predicts the grammatical and ungram-
matical sentences in any particular language.
The larger task is that we are modeling Universal Grammar, the hypothesized principles
and parameters in (universal) human cognition that allow the grammatical structures that
occur in the world’s languages, and disallow the structures that do not occur in the world’s
languages. Universal Grammar is hypothesized to be innate (i.e. genetically-endowed in
all humans), and a language-specific domain of cognition.17
In this chapter we added these notions, which play a central role in our model:
▶ generative grammar
▶ Universal Grammar
▶ Principles of Universal Grammar (formal universals)
▶ Parameters of Universal Grammar (points of variation between languages)
▶ E-language vs. I-language

Notes 1.6
1. It is also possible to overzealously apply rules like those in (2), even in cases where they shouldn’t be applied. This
phenomenon is known as hypercorrection. Two common instances are illustrated in (i).
 Chapter 1: Foundational issues 31

(i) Hypercorrect example Mainstream target Explanation

Over there is the guy whom I the guy who I think the relative pronoun who is the subject of the
think took her to the party. took her to the party relative clause, not the object (cf. the guy
who, *whom took her to the party)

This is strictly between you and I. between you and me the second pronoun is part of the conjoined
object of the preposition between, not part of a
subject

2. The prescriptive rule is actually better stated as “Don’t separate a preposition from its object,” since the traditional
formulation invites exchanges like (i).

(i) A: Who are you going to the party with?

B: Didn’t they teach you never to end a sentence with a preposition?
A: Sorry, let me rephrase that. Who are you going to the party with, Mr. Know-it-all?

3. As William Labov has often pointed out, everyday speech (apart from false starts and other self-editing phenomena)
hardly ever violates the rules of descriptive grammar.

4. Actually, that’s an oversimplification. Not all the articles and nouns an English-speaking child hears appear in the
article-noun order. To see why, carefully consider the underlined sentence in this note.

5. Since then, wugs have become something of an unofficial mascot for linguistics; it is wugs that adorn the cover of
this book.

6. When children didn’t respond this way, they either repeated the original invented word, or they didn’t respond at
all. It’s not clear what to make of these responses. Either response might indicate that the children were stumped by
the experimental task. Alternatively, repetition might have been intended as an irregular plural (cf. deer and sheep),
and silence might indicate that some of the invented words (for instance, cra) struck the children as phonologically
strange.

7. Examples of vagueness in this respect are words like bald or heap, which participate in what is known as the Sorites
Paradox. Imagine someone with a full head of hair, and imagine that you pluck out their hairs one single strand
of hair at a time. If you do that for long enough, they will eventually be bald. But it is wholly unclear when, in
that process, they become bald; and most likely there is no single instance when a single hair being pulled changes
someone from not-bald to being actually bald. This is an example of vagueness: we know what it means to be bald,
but there are fuzzy boundaries around the notion, so it is difficult to draw firm and discrete boundaries between bald
vs. not-bald. Many words in language display this kind of vagueness. But this is notably different from the ambiguity
that we are discussing in the main text, wherein there are multiple (precise) meanings that are all available in a given
sentence.

8. The examples in (39) and the discussion in this section are modeled on the discussion in Lightfoot (2021).

9. This echoes Plato’s philosophy positing innate human knowledge in a number of contexts.

10. We will note that the definition of Universal Grammar here is our own; it is relatively consistent with the original
claims about UG, but leaves wiggle room to accommodate some modern approaches to the concept.

11. The theory of Universal Grammar is not the only logical conclusion: there are camps within linguistics that take hu-
man language to be no different than any other cognitive ability, and thus understand human language to be learned
in precisely the same way that anything is learned, and there are no universal contraints on what grammatical forms
can be apart from those imposed by general cognitive abilities like limits on memory and processing. Approaches
 Chapter 1: Foundational issues 32

like this are often called usage-based, and many such approaches adopt an approach often called construction
grammar (Goldberg 2006, 2019; Tomasello 2003; Goldberg 2013; Hoffmann and Trousdale 2013).

12. The term ‘pied piping’ was invented in the 1960s by John Robert Ross (1967), a syntactician with a penchant for
metaphorical terminology.

13. Online corpora that are annotated with syntactic structure, such as the Penn Treebank, the Penn Parsed Corpora of
Historical English, and others like them, tend to use labeled bracketing because the resulting files are computationally
extremely tractable. The readability of such corpora for humans can be improved by suitable formatting of the labeled
bracketing or by providing an interface that translates the bracketed structures into tree diagrams.

14. (63a) is from a speech by George W. Bush (here). (63b) was the subject line of an email message in response to
an offer of free fabric; the author is humorously attempting to imitate the language of a child greedy for goodies.
(63c) is from “Pardon my French” (Calvin Trillin. 1990. Enough’s enough (and other rules of life). p. 169). (63d) is
from “Connoisseurs and patriots” (Joseph Wechsberg. 1948. Blue trout and black truffles: The peregrinations of an
epicure. p. 127).

15. Two important references concerning the supposed illogicality of negative concord (and of marginalized varieties of
English more generally) are Labov (1972a, 1972b).
Those who argue that negative concord is illogical often liken the rules of grammar to those of formal logic
or arithmetic, where one negation operator or subtraction operation cancels out another; that is, (NOT (NOT A))
is identical to A, and (−(−5)) = +5. Such prescriptivists never distinguish between sentences containing even and
odd numbers of negative expressions. By their own reasoning, (i.a) should have a completely different status than
(i.b)—not illogical, but at worst redundant.

(i) a. They never told nobody nothing.

b. They never told nobody.

16. Because of the social stigma associated with it, it is quite challenging to study negative concord in present-day Eng-
lish. This is because even for those speakers of negative concord varieties who don’t productively control Mainstream
U.S. English as a second dialect, the influence of prescriptive grammar is so pervasive that if such speakers reject
negative concord sentences as unacceptable, we don’t know whether they are rejecting them for grammatical or for
social reasons.

17. Reasonable people can disagree about some of these details while still operating within a UG framework.

Exercises and problems 1.7

Exercise 1.1: Descriptive and prescriptive grammar A
For each of the sentences below, provide an acceptability judgment (i.e. put an asterisk or a check-
mark next to the sentence, or rate it as somewhere in between). Also for each rule state whether
or not the sentence violates a prescriptive rule or some kind of descriptive rule (or neither, or
both).
Chapter 1: Foundational issues 33

(1) a. Up what did the roofer climb?

b. What did the roofer climb up?
c. i. I really messed my project up.
ii. What did you really mess up?
iii. Up what did you really mess?
d. Jay says they are a gym bro but I don’t think they are.
e. Jay says they are a gym bro but I don’t think are.
f. i. I didn’t do nothing.
ii. I not did anything.
g. Me and Alex are gonna get sushi for lunch.
h. i. Q: What did you eat for lunch?
ii. A: a sandwich
i. i. Q: What did you eat for lunch?
ii. A: I ate a sandwich for lunch.
j. i. Who did you visit last week?
ii. Whom did you visit last week?
k. At my new job I want to hit the ground running.
l. i. I want to quickly grab lunch before work picks up again.
ii. Quickly I want to grab lunch. (with no pauses in pronunciation)

Exercise 1.2: Descriptive and prescriptive grammar B

Can you come up with examples of sentences that are not mentioned in the text above but which
fall into each of these categories? The purpose is to think through the overlap and non-overlap
of descriptive and descriptive grammatical intuitions.
1. One sentence that doesn’t violate a prescriptive rule and is grammatical;
2. One sentence that violates a prescriptive rule but is grammatical;
3. One sentence that doesn’t violate a prescriptive rule (that you know of) but is ungrammat-
ical;
4. One sentence that violates a prescriptive rule and is ungrammatical.
In each instance, specify the prescriptive rule as you originally learned it (it doesn’t need
to be the same rule for each category above). This can be done for any language where you
have native speaker intuitions and received education about language prescription. If any of the
categories prove challenging to find an example for (i.e. you can’t think of something), say so in
your response and give 1-2 sentences of thoughts explaining why you think it might have been
hard to think of something.
Chapter 1: Foundational issues 34

Exercise 1.3: Descriptive and prescriptive grammar C

The sentences in (4) violate several descriptive rules of English, three of which were given in (5).
As mentioned in the text, there is a fourth descriptive rule that is violated in (4). Formulate the
rule (you shouldn’t need more than a sentence).

Exercise 1.4: Belfast English subject agreement

(1)–(4) illustrate the facts of subject-verb agreement in the variety of English spoken in Belfast,
Ireland (data from Henry 1995, chapter 2). Describe the data as clearly and briefly as you
can.

Take Note

In order to avoid conflating morphological form with semantic function, you can refer
to “is” and “are” as “the i- form” and “the a- form”, rather than as “singular” and “plu-
ral”.

(1) a. ✔ The girl is late. (2) a. * The girl are late.

b. ✔ She is late. b. * She are late.
c. ✔ Is {the girl, she} late? c. * Are {the girl, she} late?

(3) a. ✔ The girls are late. (4) a. ✔ The girls is late.

b. ✔ They are late. b. * They is late.
c. ✔ Are {the girls, they} late? c. * Is {the girls, they} late?

Exercise 1.5: Identifying ambiguity

A. Which of the newspaper headlines in (1) are lexically ambiguous, which are structurally
ambiguous, and which are a mixture of both types of ambiguity? Explain.

(1) a. Beating witness provides names

b. Child teaching expert to speak
c. Drunk gets nine months in violin case
d. Enraged cow injures farmer with ax
e. Prostitutes appeal to pope
f. Teacher strikes idle kids
g. Teller stuns man with stolen check

B. At least two of the examples form a subgroup even within their type (lexical, structural,
mixed). Can you find them and explain their similarity?
Chapter 1: Foundational issues 35

Exercise 1.6: Identifying recursive phrases

In the chapter, we showed that sentences are recursive categories. In other words, one instance of
the grammatical category ‘Sentence’ can contain another instance of the same category. Provide
evidence that noun phrases and prepositional phrases are recursive categories, too.

Word of Caution
Be careful to give examples that are recursive, and not just ones in which the grammatical
category in question occurs more than once. For instance, (1) does not provide the evidence
required in this exercise, because the second prepositional phrase is not contained in the
first. This is clearly shown by the fact that the order of the prepositional phrases can be
switched.

(1) a. The cat jumped [PP onto the table ] [PP without the slightest hesitation ].
b. The cat jumped [PP without the slightest hesitation ] [PP onto the table ].

Exercise 1.7: Ungrammaticality and semantic anomaly

Which, if any, of the sentences in (1)–(6) are ungrammatical? Which, if any, are semantically or
otherwise anomalous? Briefly explain.

(1) a. They decided to go tomorrow yesterday.

b. They decided to go yesterday tomorrow.

(2) a. They decided yesterday to go tomorrow.

b. They decided tomorrow to go yesterday.

(3) a. Yesterday, they decided to go tomorrow.

b. Tomorrow, they decided to go yesterday.

(4) They decided to go yesterday yesterday.

(5) How long didn’t Rebecca wait?

(6) Pelé came from a much poor family.

Exercise 1.8: Structural ambiguity

A. The following expressions are structurally ambiguous. For each reading (i.e. interpreta-
tion), provide a paraphrase that is itself unambiguous or a diagnostic scenario (that is, a
scenario that is compatible only with the reading in question).

(1) a. chocolate cake icing

b. clever boys and girls
c. Charis will answer the question precisely at noon.
d. Laila will watch the man from across the street.
Chapter 1: Foundational issues 36

e. They should decide if they will come tomorrow.

B. For each reading, provide as much of a labeled bracketing as you can, focusing on distin-
guishing between the readings. In other words, you may not be able to give a full labeled
bracketing, but for each reading, determine which words go together more or less closely.

Exercise 1.9: Outcomes of language prescription

In (2b) of §1.1 we saw this prescriptive rule:

(1) Don’t end a sentence with a preposition.

In general, this is meant to capture the difference between the sentences in (2), where (2a) is
prescriptively unacceptable (since the sentence ends with the preposition with) and instead we
are taught that (2b) is the preferable sentence.

(2) a. Who did you go to the store with?

b. With whom did you go to the store?

To our ears, (2a) is comfortably natural in contemporary Mainstream U.S. English, whereas (2b)
sounds awkward/stilted. But both are presumably possible for many U.S. English speakers.
A. Explain what relevance the facts in the examples below have for the prescriptive rule in
(1).
B. Briefly discuss how syntacticians ought to engage with prescriptive rules.

(3) a. I ran into Sarah at the grocery store this afternoon.

b. Who did you run into?
c. * Into who(m) did you run?
(4) a. I really messed up the scheduling for this week.
b. What did you mess up?
c. * Up what did you mess?
d. I really messed it up.
e. * I really messed up it.
(5) a. I fell down the stairs yesterday.
b. I fell down them last week!
c. * I fell them down last week!
d. What did you fall down?
e. ? Down what did you fall?
(6) a. I burned down the house last week.
b. * I burned down it last week.
c. I burned it down last week.
d. What did you burn down?
e. * Down what did you burn?
Chapter 1: Foundational issues 37

Exercise 1.10: Distinguishing linguistic intuitions

As discussed in this chapter, linguistic intuitions can be tricky to perceive and describe.1 This
exercise is practice in doing this. Each of the pairs/sets of sentences below show a grammatical
and natural sentence, and an anomalous sentence that is marked with a %. Your task is to specify
(as much as possible) the nature of the anomaly: try to identify whether the issue is semantic (a
problem with a meaning), pragmatic, or syntactic.

(1) a. Maya ate an apple and an orange.

b. What did Maya eat?
c. What did Maya eat an apple and?
(2) a. The children ate crackers for snack.
b. % The children ate juice for snack.
(3) a. I baked and ate a cake for dessert.
b. % I ate and baked a cake for dessert.
(4) a. He gave a gift to his mom.
b. % He gave to his mom.
c. % He gave a gift.
d. % He gave to his mom a gift.
(5) a. I wonder why Alex likes Oscar so much.
b. Who wonders why Alex likes Oscar so much?
c. % Who do you wonder why Alex likes so much?
(6) a. I am happy man but I am not a strong man.
b. % I am a happy man but I am not a man.
(7) a. It seems that the children want to devour the cake.
b. The children seem to want to devour the cake.
c. % The cake seems that the children want to devour.
d. %The cake seems the children to want to devour.
(8) a. The community members gathered to protest.
b. % Mike gathered to protest.
(9) % “She was entirely dressed in articles of clothing and had nothing on her feet except a
pair of socks and two shoes.” [Excerpt from Lemony Snicket: The Unauthorized Au-
tobiography by Lemony Snicket (a.k.a. Daniel Handler), via Gretchen McCulloch’s All
Things Linguistic.]
1. This exercise was inspired by an exercise from Matt Pearson.
Chapter 1: Foundational issues 38

Problem 1.1: An article puzzle

Can you solve the riddle posed in endnote 4 of this chapter?

Problem 1.2: Logical dependencies in our theory

Syntactic structure and recursion are both formal universals of human language. Are they both
equally basic properties of human language? Explain in a (possibly very) brief paragraph.

Problem 1.3: Constructing ambiguities

A. Can you come up with a sentence (or other expression) that is structurally ambiguous more
than two ways? For each reading, provide an unambiguous paraphrase or a diagnostic
scenario.
B. For each reading, which words go together? Provide a labeled bracketing, with a focus on
distinguishing the interpretations (that is, you don’t necessarily need to label each word).

Problem 1.4: Evaluating grammars

Assume a toy grammar G1 with a vocabulary of lowercase letters and a single grammatical cat-
egory X. G1 generates structures like the following:

(1) X X X X X
y
X X X X X X X X
y g a m p
X X X X X X
t y e p
X X X X
a m m
X X
p h

Another toy grammar G2 generates structures like this:

(2) X X X X X
a
X X X X X X X X
m e m m t
X X X X X X
p h p h
X X X X
p e p
X X
e z

Briefly answer the following questions:

Chapter 1: Foundational issues 39

A. What is the difference between G1 and G2?

B. If presented with a string of lowercase letters (for example, “abc”), is it possible to tell
which grammar has generated the string?

Problem 1.5: Language change

The grammars of Early Modern English (1500–1710) and present-day English differ enough for
certain Early Modern English sentences to be ungrammatical today. Find several such sentences,
and briefly describe the source of the ungrammaticality as best as you can. Early Modern English
texts that are easily accessible on the Web include Shakespeare’s plays and the Authorized Version
of the Bible (also known as the King James Bible).
 2
Grammatical
categories

Chapter outline
2.1 Introduction to grammatical categories (parts of speech) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
2.1.1 Lexical and functional categories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
2.1.2 Open and closed classes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
2.2 The trouble with “words” and “parts of speech” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
2.3 Major lexical categories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
2.3.1 Nouns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
2.3.2 Verbs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
2.3.3 Adjectives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
2.3.4 Adverbs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
2.4 Major functional categories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
2.5 Abstract categories: Inflection as a case study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
2.5.1 Modals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
2.5.2 Auxiliary verbs in English . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
2.5.3 Inflection as a grammatical category . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
2.6 On the (non-)universality of grammatical categories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
2.7 Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
2.8 Exercises and problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
2.9 Appendix: Finiteness in English . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
2.9.1 Verb forms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
2.9.2 Finiteness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90

As we will discuss in more detail in Chapters 3, 5 and 6, phrases come in various “flavors”
like noun phrases, verb phrases, adjective phrases, adverb phrases, and several others. The reason
is that the words that make up the phrases themselves belong to different grammatical categories.
Traditionally, these are known as parts of speech.
However, the traditional notion of part of speech is flawed in two ways. First, the concept
of “word” seems simple and straightforward, but isn’t. Second, parts of speech are traditionally
defined in terms of meaning, even though these definitions quickly break down. Our solution to
these problems will be to allow grammatical categories to be associated with morphemes (rather
Chapter 2: Grammatical categories 41

than words) and to define them in terms of morphological form and morphosyntactic dis-
tribution (rather than semantic function).
The chapter is organized as follows. We begin by clarifying the notion of syntactic category
itself, as just discussed, and presenting the four main lexical categories, that is, grammatical
categories of lexical elements. We briefly discuss grammatical categories for functional elements,
and then discuss the idea of abstract grammatical categories: grammatical categories that are
composed of various kinds of subcategories. In this introduction we focus on Inflection, but
there are others. We conclude with a discussion of whether grammatical categories are universal
or not.

Introduction to grammatical categories (parts of

speech) 2.1
In the U.S. education system, many people’s first experiences with so-called grammar involves
identifying parts of speech as part of the task of “diagramming sentences.” So in an example like
(1), we can label the words in the sentence based on the category they fall into.

(1) Dolphins play endlessly.

noun verb adverb

As we will show in this chapter, there is definitely a mental reality to this kind of categorization,
but it also diverges significantly from the ways that we are taught in school.

2.1.1 Lexical and functional categories

Linguists tend to divide lexical items (memorized elements in a language) into two broad sets
of categories. First are lexical categories, which tend to be open-class elements with real-world
semantic content (words like bicycle, pterodactyl, beautiful, fashionable, etc; see § 2.1.2). Second
are functional categories, which tend to mainly serve functions within grammar itself: to make
sentences fit together, as it were. Functional categories have meaning that is less tangibly de-
scribable in the real world: words like the, might, and that, among many others. Rather than
using the term parts of speech, we will use the term grammatical category to capture the
same notion (the term ‘syntactic category’ is sometimes used for the same).
Chapter 2: Grammatical categories 42

Lexical categories:
Category Examples
noun kumquat, Darius, happiness
verb synthesize, endure, appear
adjective glad, big, unequivocal
adverb quickly, simply, luckily

Functional categories:
Category Examples
preposition with, under, beside
article the, a, an
demonstrative this, that, yonder
quantifier every, any, no, few
pronoun me, us, I, who
possessive pronoun hers, mine, theirs
complementizer/subordinator that, whether, if
auxiliary verb be, have, do

Table 2.1: Selected English grammatical categories, both lexical and functional

In some sense, grammatical categories might seem simple or fundamental, and they are
very useful in understanding grammatical patterns. But they can get somewhat complicated to
define, especially given how we’re accustomed to thinking about them.

2.1.2 Open and closed classes

Lexical categories tend to be open classes, meaning that new words are readily added to them
consciously (for example, inventing a new word for a new technology). Closed classes, on the
other hand, are much harder to add new words/morphemes to, especially intentionally. Most
functional categories are closed-class, as noted in Table 2.1. So the inventory of prepositions in
English is large, but it’s uncommon for a preposition to be added to the language. On the other
hand, new nouns and verbs are added to language all the time. Technology is a frequent driver
of this in the modern world: it was not that long ago that words like google and iPhone, and
phrases like upload it to the web, would have been meaningless in the 1980s. Slang and language
change are also drivers of innovation in open classes: for example, bae as a term of endearment,
cap to mean ‘lie’, drip to refer to someone’s sense of style, bet as an interjection as a positive
affirmation, etc.1 What slang generally does not do is change verb conjugation paradigms, add
new prepositions or complementizers to a language, etc.
The history of popular discussion about pronouns in U.S. culture is a good example of the
psychological reality of open and closed classes; we report this social history here as described
in Baron (1981). Unlike many languages, English has traditionally lacked a third person singu-
Chapter 2: Grammatical categories 43

lar pronoun that is non-specified for gender.2 So Mainstream U.S. English had she and he, and
it for inanimate referents, but no singular pronoun for humans that was unspecified for gen-
der. This has led to both the systematic exclusion of the female gender (use of default masculine
pronouns such as the so-called generic he), but also to a history of nightmarish circumlocutions
in attempts to be inclusive: sentences like Each student should bring his or her assignment with
him or her to class.3 But even these attempts at inclusion nonetheless still exclude anyone not
within that gender binary. There is an extraordinarily long history of academics and others
attempting to introduce a new gender-neutral third-person singular (also called epicene) pro-
noun: as far back as 1878 an anonymous column appears in the Atlantic Monthly magazine ask-
ing for a gender-neutral third-person pronoun and that “the eminent linguists leave the spelling
reform and such trifles long enough to coin us a word”. In the second half of the 19th century
gender-neutral pronoun proposals proliferated, producing a positively dizzying list of alternatives
both lighthearted and serious through borrowings, blends, clippings, and root creations, among
other strategies: ne/nis/nim, hiser/himer, en, hi/hes/hem, le/lis/lim, unus, talis, ip/ips, ir/iro/im,
tha/thar/them, ons, e/es/em, hizer. The earliest of these date back to around 1850, while the most
famous proposal is likely thon/thons, a blend of that one. Another explosion of proposals came in
the 1970s on the tails of the feminist movement: she/heris/herm, co/cos, ve/vis/ver, tey/ter/tem, fm,
shis/shim/shims/shimself, ze/zim/zees/zeeself, per/pers, na/nan, shem, herm, ne/nis/ner, hir/herim,
she/herm/hs, po/xe/jhe, e/e’s/em, sheme/shis/shem, heshe/hisher/himmer, em/ems, ae, hir.
Alongside these neological proposals, the grammatically plural pronoun they has been used
as a singular gender-neutral pronoun the way it is today since at least the time of Shakespeare
(Bjorkman 2017). So instead of the awkward circumlocution above, for many speakers it is gram-
matical to say Each student should bring their homework with them to class. Uses of they like
this, in tandem with words like each and every, are attested as far back as Middle English with
Chaucer’s late-fourteenth century Canterbury Tales (Balhorn 2004). These uses tend to focus on
instances where the identity of the referent is unknown, though still a singular usage.
A natural extension of this usage has happened much more recently on a broad scale, using
they for singular referents who have a known identity. This would be a sentence like Max said
that they are bringing their friend, where they refers to Max. This is the precise usage for which
the long list of unsuccessful novel pronouns two paragraphs up have been proposed since 1850
or so.4 This kind of historical shift is already familiar from the history of English: we used to
have separate pronouns for 2nd person singular and plural (thou and you, respectively), which
over time merged, and we now use the same pronoun (you) for an addressee whether they are a
singular individual or multiple individuals.5
The point, of course, is that it is not impossible for changes to occur in closed classes like
pronouns, but the tendency is for those changes to occur using forms already existing internal to
the grammatical system in some way, borrowing either from other pronoun forms, or from other
nominal forms in the language. Such changes are in fact not altogether uncommon: examples
include usted ‘you (formal)’ < vuestra merced ‘your mercy’ in Spanish, saya ‘I (formal) < Sanskrit
sahāya ‘servant’ in Indonesian, kimi ‘you (familiar)’ shifting meaning from ‘ruler’ in Japanese,
and ce ‘I (humble)’ shifting meaning from ‘that one’ in Korean (Heine and Song 2011). This so-
cial history of pronouns in the U.S. is an interesting illustration of the nature of open and closed
classes, as inside the U.S. this was a long recognized grammatical restriction with unpleasant
Chapter 2: Grammatical categories 44

social consequences: speakers were well aware of the need to refer to an individual without ref-
erencing gender, and also aware that English lacked a broadly-accepted mechanism to do so. But
despite that need, no attempts to introduce new pronouns ever caught on: pronouns are closed
classes and highly resistant to novel words. A borrowing/extension from within the pronoun
system has been much more successful, however.

The trouble with “words” and “parts of speech” 2.2

What kinds of elements are able to be assigned a part of speech? Colloquially we think of a “word”
as having a part of speech, but the concept of a “word” falls apart surprisingly quickly when you
investigate it. The elements we call “words” generally have some degree of phonological and
grammatical independence. So, phonologically, we can see a word standing alone, not requiring
other content to be said; this is illustrated in the answer to the question below.

(2) Q: Which do you like better, coffee or tea?

A: Tea.

Likewise, many “words” tend to be able to combine with other “words” in flexible ways. So
in (3) tea can be used as the subject or the object of the sentence, or as part of a prepositional
phrase.

(3) a. Tea is good for you.

b. She doesn’t drink tea.
c. There are beneficial antioxidants in tea.

But these notions start to fall apart fairly quickly once you poke at them a little. The sen-
tences in (4) include the phonetically transcribed [tʰiz].

(4) a. Please do not [tʰiz] your younger sibling. (tease)

b. That shop sells [tʰiz] from around the world. (teas)
c. I think the antioxidants are [tʰiz] best property. (tea’s = tea possessive)
d. [tʰiz] good for you. (tea’s = tea is)

Most of us would say without hesitation that tease in (4a) is a word. And even though teas
in (4b) is made up of two morphemes (tea + pluRal), we’d guess that most of you would still be
inclined to call that a word. But are the instances of [tʰiz] tea’s in (4c) and (4d) words? For many
native English speakers, intuitions about what a ‘word’ is start to fall apart here. Despite being
phonetically identical to the other elements we readily call words, in (4d) we have a sense that
two different grammatical elements are being combined, a noun tea and a verbal element is (a
similar argument can be applied to (4c)). But at the same time, most of us would also hesitate to
Chapter 2: Grammatical categories 45

call [tʰiz] in (4d) two words. So though we are taught in primary school (we can call it “4th grade
grammar”) that “words” have parts of speech, it’s not clear what a word even is.
The issue becomes even more salient when looking at agglutinative languages, where entire
sentences can be expressed with a single “word”. Swahili is an example here, where what is
one morphological and phonological string (waliwaona) contains all the components of a fully
grammatical sentence (subject, tense, object, verb).

(5) Wa-li-wa-ona.
agR-pst-agR-see
‘They (plural) saw them (plural).’

So perhaps at bare minimum we need to say that morphemes are assigned parts of speech,
and not “words”. But even a monomorphemic word can be trouble. Consider our 4th grade gram-
mar definitions of major parts of speech, which tend to rely on semantic classifications.

(6) a. Noun person place thing (or idea!)

b. Verb an action (or state!)
c. Adjective modifies a noun
d. Adverb modifies a verb or adjective

These classifications fall apart fairly quickly on closer inspection. A word like yesterday
in (7a) we might want to say is an adverb, since it modifies a verb (yesterday is when the go-
ing happened). But yesterday in (7b) is clearly not an adverb, being used as a possessor (which
is a position that only noun phrases occur in). But yesterday means the same thing in both in-
stances.

(7) a. We went to the beach yesterday.

b. Yesterday’s beach trip was fun.

Likewise, beer is clearly a noun in (8a) (and typically would be considered a noun), but is used as
a verb in (8b) to mean ‘give (someone) a beer.’

(8) a. Give me a beer!

b. Beer me! (Colloquial Mainstream English, = “give me a beer”)6

The morphological properties of “words” further complicates things. Reading in (9a) be-
haves like a verb, yet in (9b) it behaves like a noun. But in each case it’s referring to something
we’d reasonably call the action of reading.

(9) a. Maisha is reading an Elephant and Piggie book.

b. Daily reading is recommended for kindergarteners.

The canonical example of this from the literature is destroy, as in (10). A verbal use of destroy is
unambiguous in (10a), but even though in (10b) destruction is a noun, it transparently describes
an action.

(10) a. The cat destroyed the couch.

Chapter 2: Grammatical categories 46

b. the cat’s destruction of the couch

So what do we do about our definitions from (6) above? Clearly they’re not sufficient. In
fact, a linguist is much more inclined to write definitions like those in (11).

(11) a. Noun “words” that do nouny things

b. Verb “words” that do verby things
c. Adjective “words” that do adjective-y things
d. Adverb “words” that do adverby things

The definitions in (11) are of course silly, but they’re actually not far off. What (11a) pre-
supposes, for instance, is that there are such things as “nouny things”. What this is saying is that
grammatical categories are defined by their grammatical distribution, not by semantic properties.
So what are “nouny” sorts of things to do? We can consider both morphological distribution and
syntactic distribution. Syntactically, for example, nouns often serve as the subject or object of a
sentence and they commonly follow determiners and adjectives. Morphologically, they can be
marked as plural and take various derivational affixes that only attach to nouns (like -tion and
-er, for example). In English, elements that behave in this way are consistently nouns. The tables
below illustrate (non-exhaustively) some of the distributional properties of major grammatical
categories in English.

Category Syntactic distribution Examples

Noun ▶ subject/object of sentence The small dog ran away.
▶ object of preposition The chew toy is with Lilly.
▶ often follow determiners/adjectives

Verb ▶ takes a subject/object Lilly might run away.

▶ can follow auxiliary verbs like be and have Cooper wants Lilly to run away.
▶ can follow modals like might and should
▶ can follow the infinitive marker to
Adjective ▶ often follow a determiner and precede a The very small dog ran away.
noun Lilly looks so small!
▶ often follow linking verbs like be and seem
▶ can follow intensifiers like very and so

Adverb ▶ often precede adjectives The small dog ran away briefly.
▶ often precede or follow verb phrases Luckily it won’t take a week.
▶ some appear at the beginning of a sentence

Table 2.2: Syntactic distribution of selected English grammatical categories (Nagelhout et al. 2018)
Chapter 2: Grammatical categories 47

Category Morphological distribution Examples

Noun ▶ bears plural morphology cats, wishes, children
▶ some derivational affixes are only on nouns prediction, driver
(e.g. -tion, -er)

Verb ▶ take the third-person singular -s suffix loathes, says, tries

▶ bear past tense morphology jumped, dreamt, froze
▶ can bear the affixes -ize, -ate, -ify pixelize, formulate, beautify

Adjective ▶ can bear the affixes -ish, -like childish, childlike

▶ can occur in comparative (-er) and superlative bigger, biggest
(-est) forms

Adverb ▶ often bear the affix -ly briefly, coolly, equally

▶ can occur in comparative (-er/more) and more briefly, cooler, coolest
superlative (-est/most) forms

Table 2.3: Morphological properties of selected English grammatical categories (Nagelhout et al.
2018)

The fact that distributional properties are primary in our knowledge of grammatical cat-
egories is evident in literature, especially children’s literature, where invented nonsense words
sometimes play a major role. The following is a brief selection from Dr. Seuss’s The Lorax:
You won’t see the Once-ler. Don’t knock at his door. He stays in his Lerkim on top of
his store. He stays in his Lerkim, cold under the floor, where he makes his own clothes out
of miff-muffered moof. And on special dank midnights in August, he peeks out of the
shutters and sometimes he speaks and tells how the Lorax was lifted away. He’ll tell you,
perhaps… if you’re willing to pay.

Then he pulls up the pail, makes a most careful count to see if you’ve paid him the proper
amount. Then he hides what you paid him away in his Snuvv, his secret strange hole in
his gruvvulous glove. Then he grunts. “I will call you by Whisper-ma-Phone, for the
secrets I tell you are for your ears alone.”

SLUPP!

Down slupps the Whisper-ma-Phone to your ear and the old Once-ler’s whispers are not
very clear, since they have to come down through a snergely hose, and he sounds as if he
had smallish bees up his nose. “Now I’ll tell you”, he says, with his teeth sounding gray,
“how the Lorax got lifted and taken away… It all started way back… such a long, long time
back…
Chapter 2: Grammatical categories 48

Each of the bolded words in the selection above were invented by Theodor Geisel (a.k.a.
Dr. Seuss), and if you’ve never read The Lorax, this may be the first time you’ve encountered
them. Sometimes we can get an interpretation: “Down slupps the Whisper-ma-Phone” invokes
an onomatopoeic interpretation of slupp as the sound the phone is making while being lowered.
Others, like gruvvulous, don’t suggest much of an interpretation at all, instead achieving a stylistic
and rhythmic effect. Yet in all cases we have a very clear sense of their syntactic category: slupps
is a verb describing the motion of the Whisper-ma-phone, gruvvulous and snergelly are adjectives
describing glove and hose, respectively, and Lerkim, Snuvv, and Lorax are all nouns. For each, our
ability to readily identify their syntactic category is due to the fact that their use falls within the
distributional criteria for each category, like those illustrated in Tables 2.2 and 2.3.
Again we are left to conclude that the proper defining characteristics of grammatical cat-
egories are not based in semantics: even nonsense words have grammatical categories, despite
not meaning anything. Instead, grammatical categories are defined by grammatical criteria: their
morphological and syntactic distributions. In the sections that follow, we provide additional de-
scription of the nuances around some prominent grammatical categories.

Major lexical categories 2.3

In this section we briefly introduce major lexical categories that are common across languages,
as well as briefly describing relevant properties and sub-categories that arise within each. The
goal here is not to be comprehensive, but rather to provide some common ground for the ways
that these categories are referenced in this text.

2.3.1 Nouns
In the traditional school definition, a noun “refers to a person, place, or thing”. But as has often
been pointed out, this definition incorrectly excludes nouns like those in (12) (unless the concept
of thing is reduced to be nearly vacuous).

(12) explosion, glint, mind, moment, thunder

As a result, modern linguists define nouns not in semantic (meaning-based) terms, but in
distributional terms—with reference to their occurrence relative to other grammatical categories
in the language. In English, for instance, a useful criterion for whether a word is a noun is
whether it can form a phrase with the determiner the. According to this criterion, the words in
curly brackets in (13a) are nouns, but those in (13b) are not.

(13) a. the { explosion, glint, mind, moment, thunder }

b. * the { explodes, glinted, minded, momentous, thundered }
Chapter 2: Grammatical categories 49

Grammatical gender, number, and person

It is common for nouns and noun phrases to bear features for gender, number, and person. Per-
haps the most familiar of these are number features: in English, a noun phrase can be either
singular (ex., cat) denoting a single individual, or plural (ex., cats) denoting more than one in-
dividual. Singular vs. plural is the most common number distinction, but languages do display
others. Many varieties of Arabic feature a dual: dual marking on a count noun means that there
are two of those things. This occurs along with singular and plural numbers—Emirati Arabic is
demonstrated here (data from Leung, Ntelitheos, and Al Kaabi 2020).

(14) a. ‫ﺱ‬
muhandəs muhandəs-iin
engineer engineer-pl
‘engineer’, ‘engineers’
b. ّ ُ ّ
mʕalləm mʕallm-een
teacher teacher-du
‘teacher’, ‘two teachers’

Many varieties of Arabic also feature a singulative number, which exists for so-called
collective nouns. As their names imply, a collective noun indicates a collection and in some ways
functions like a mass noun. A singulative noun indicates a countable unit of a collective noun. The
singulative can in turn be pluralized, sometimes with the meaning of ‘a few’ or ‘a small amount’
(a paucal use). However, the meaning of this kind of plural is not always straightforward and
can carry a wide range of other meanings as well. The data below, concerning Levantine Arabic,
is from Brustad (2008), which discusses this kind of plural in more detail.

(15) a. ‫ﺕ‬
samak samk-e samk-āt
fish fish-singulative fish-paucal
‘fish’, ‘a fish’, ‘fishes’
b. ‫ﻭ‬ ‫ﻭ‬ ‫ﻭ ﺕ‬
wasaḵ wasḵ-e wasḵ-āt
dirt dirt-singulative dirt-paucal
‘dirt’, ‘a spot of dirt’, ‘dirt’

“Person” features may also be familiar from grade school grammar classes. “Person” refers
to the role that an individual does or does not play in the current conversation. First person is the
speaker, second person is the addressee, and third person is an independent party. Pronouns are
commonly marked for person. Table 2.4 gives a subset of the English personal pronouns.
Chapter 2: Grammatical categories 50

Person Number Subject forms Non-subject forms

1 I me
2 sg you you
3 he, she, they, it him, her, them, it
1 we us
2 pl you you
3 they them

Table 2.4: Selected English personal pronouns

The pronouns above make clear another common property of nominals: grammatical gen-
der, or more accurately, noun classes. English only shows this in third person singular pronouns,
having masculine and feminine pronouns, along with a non-gendered pronoun (singular they).
English also has an inanimate third-person singular pronoun (it). But some languages have per-
vasive marking of gender on nominals, such that all nominals (whether human/animate or not)
are specified as being either masculine (m) or feminine (f). Examples from Bulgarian and Amharic
are given below.

(16) a. дроб drób.m, ‘liver’, дро́бът dróbât.m ‘the liver’ Bulgarian (Nicolova 2017)
b. дроб drób.f, ‘fraction’, дробта́ drobtá.f ‘the fraction’
(17) a. ፈረስ färäs.m, ‘horse’, ፈረሱ färäsu.m ‘the horse’ Amharic (Leslau 2000)
b. ጸሐይ ṣähay.f, ‘sun’, ጸሐይዋ ṣähaywa.f ‘the sun’
(18) a. Bul. луна́ luná ‘moon.f’, Amh. ጨረቃ č̣äräḳa ‘moon.m’

As has commonly been noted, the word for ‘moon’ is masculine in some languages (such as
Amharic), and feminine in others (such as Bulgarian). This of course is striking, since all humans
are looking at the same moon. Clearly, then, gender in this sense is not about human sex or gender
at all, but is a categorical grouping of nominals that is relatively arbitrary: essentially, a classi-
fication system for nouns that happens to correspond to human sex/gender in some languages.
This is why some languages have only masculine and feminine (like French and Arabic) whereas
others (like German and Albanian) have three genders: masculine, feminine, and neuter.
This is even more evident in looking at noun class systems cross-linguistically. We will use
Lubukusu, a Bantu language spoken in western Kenya as an example. All nominals in Lubukusu
fall into some noun class, but these classes do not correspond in any way to the gendered classi-
fication systems of Indo-European languages. Table 2.5 gives the Lubukusu noun classes, which
are labeled with cardinal numbers (1, 2, 3, etc). Odd numbers are singular classes, and (usu-
ally) the immediately following even numbers are the plural form for those nouns. Class 1-2 is
for humans, a fairly strong semantic restriction. But otherwise there are limited strict seman-
tic associations with particular noun classes. For example, the Lubukusu terms for arm/hand
(kumukhono class 3) and foot/leg (siikele, class 7) both describe human appendages but are in
different noun classes.
In Lubukusu there are kinds of nominals that fall into the noun class system that don’t
have direct parallels in gender-based noun class systems. For example, most nominals (like ku-
Chapter 2: Grammatical categories 51

Table 2.5: Lubukusu Noun Classes (Mutonyi 2000, 6)

Class Pre-Prefix Prefix Example Gloss

1 o- mu- ómukhasi ‘woman’
2 ba- ba- babaana ‘children
3 ku- mu- kúmukhono ‘arm/hand’
4 ki- mi- kímikhono ‘arms/hands’
5 li- li- lilyaanda ‘ember’
6 ka- ma- kamaanda ‘embers’
7 si- si- sisyaangu ‘sponge’
8 bi- bi- bibyaangu ‘sponges’
9 e- N- eendubi ‘basket’
10 chi- N- chiindubi ‘baskets’
11 lu- lu- lúlwiika ‘horn’
12 (Diminutive) kha- kha- khákhaana ‘small child’
14 bu- bu- búbwíino ‘ink’
15 khu- khu- khukhwaanja ‘to begin’
16 (‘at’) a- amulyaango ‘at/near the door’
16a (‘towards’) sya- syamulyaango ‘towards the door’
17 (‘on’) khu- khumulyaango ‘on the door’
18 (‘in’) mu- mumulyaango ‘in the door’
20 (Augm) ku- ku- kúkwaana ‘big child’
(4) (Aug) ki- mi- kímyaana ‘big children’
23 (‘in the vicinity of’) e- énaaróbi ‘at Nairobi’
Chapter 2: Grammatical categories 52

mulyaango ‘door’ in (19a)) can be transformed into a location by putting them in either class 16,
17, 18.

(19) Lubukusu locative forms (Mutonyi 2000, 25–27)

a. ku-mu-lyaango c. khu-mu-lyaango
3-3-door 17-3-door
‘door’ ‘on the door’
b. a-mu-lyaango d. mu-mu-lyaango
16-3-door 18-3-door
‘near the door’ ‘in the door’

The features of noun class (grammatical gender), number, and person are commonly re-
ferred to collectively as phi-features (or written using the Greek letter, 𝜑-features).

Count nouns and mass nouns

Nouns are traditionally divided into two major subclasses: count nouns and mass nouns.
Count nouns (in Mainstream U.S. English) can be accompanied by the indefinite article, and they
have a plural form, whereas mass nouns have neither of these properties.

(20) Count noun:

a. a(n) { book, child, couch, explosion, invitation, job, problem, vegetable }
b. books, children, couches, explosions, invitations, jobs, problems, vegetables
(21) Mass noun:
a. * a(n) { advice, furniture, rice }
b. * advices, furnitures, rices

Conversely, singular count nouns cannot follow expressions of quantity like a lot of, much,
and so on, whereas mass nouns can.7

(22) Count noun:

a. * a lot of { book, child, couch, explosion, invitation, job, problem, vegetable }
b. * much { book, child, couch, explosion, invitation, job, problem, vegetable }
(23) Mass noun:
a. a lot of { advice, furniture, rice }
b. much { advice, furniture, rice }
Chapter 2: Grammatical categories 53

Proper nouns and common nouns

A further distinction is traditionally drawn between proper nouns (also known as proper
names) and common nouns. In contrast to common nouns, proper nouns are conventionally
capitalized in English.

(24) a. Common nouns:

city, collie, country, planet, state
b. Proper nouns:
Philadelphia, Lassie, France, Jupiter, Maryland

Proper nouns refer to particular individual entities. The relation between proper nouns and
individuals is not necessarily one-to-one, however. For instance, the proper noun Sandra may
refer to many different individuals of that name. Individuals with the same proper name needn’t
share any distinguishing properties (other than having the same name). So Athens, Greece and
Athens, Georgia needn’t have any substantive property in common that sets them apart from
other cities, and there is nothing to stop us from giving the name Lassie to a pet without any of
the prototypical qualities of Lassie from the television show (intelligence, loyalty, and so on). Our
Lassie, in fact, needn’t even be a dog. In short, proper nouns function like pure pointers. In the
same way that one and the same pointer can be used to point to different and unrelated items in
a presentation, the same proper noun can be used to refer to different and unrelated individuals.
In contrast, common nouns refer to sets of entities that are related by sharing certain properties.
That is, common nouns have intrinsic semantic content and cannot be used in the relatively
arbitrary way that proper nouns can be.8

2.3.2 Verbs
As we will discuss in Chapter 4, in most sentences a predication relationship is the heart of the
sentence. What is predication? Speaking informally, it is the attribution of some property to an
individual. So in the sentence Lilly is a dog, dog-ness is being attributed to Lilly. The sentence Lilly
is gray attributes the property of being gray to Lilly. The sentence Lilly ate dinner attributes the
property of eating dinner to Lilly. In each sentence, the sentence says something (the predicate)
about an entity (Lilly, in this instance). We will mention predicative uses of various categories
in this chapter, but see § 4.1 of Chapter 4 for a more comprehensive discussion of the notion of a
predicate.
Verbs are language’s main tool for forming predicates of this sort. They serve to commu-
nicate either that some state holds, or some event is taking place. They are therefore identifed in
most languages as the grammatical category that communicates the state or event being reported,
and which co-occurs with arguments of various sorts. Arguments are the central participants
in an event.9 The verbs are in bold in the examples below.

(25) a. It is raining.
b. The children will jump in the puddles.
c. The dog rolled in a mud puddle.
d. We drank hot chocolate to warm up afterward.
Chapter 2: Grammatical categories 54

Many languages have one or more special verbs, termed copulas, which allow other entities
(like nouns or adjectives) to serve as predicates. In Mainstream U.S. English the copula is be.

(26) a. Lilly is gray.

b. Lilly is sleepy.
c. Lilly is a dog.
d. Maisha is a student.

The particular identifying aspects of grammatical categories vary across languages, but
there are also consistent and persistent patterns cross-linguistically. For verbs, it is quite common
for them to inflect in various ways: verbs tend to inflect for the tense or aspect of the construction
they occur in, for example. Tense marks whether an event is in the past, present, or future,
and aspect communicates a perspective on the event, namely, whether an event is ongoing (ex.,
imperfective: Lilly is sleeping) or an event is completed (ex., perfective: Lilly slept).

(27) Mainstream U.S. English tense

a. The children ate lunch. Past tense
b. The children eat lunch (every day). Present/habitual tense
c. The children will eat lunch. Future tense

(28) Mainstream U.S. English aspect

a. The children are eating lunch. imperfective/progressive aspect
b. The children have eaten lunch. perfective aspect

Likewise, it is quite common cross-linguistically for verbs to agree with their arguments,
particularly their subjects. We only see this in Mainstream U.S. English with third person singu-
lar:

(29) a. A horse walk-s into a bar.

b. Horses walk-∅ into a bar.

Many other languages show robust agreement on verbs; Bantu languages are highly ag-
glutinative, with morphology on verbs inflecting with the features of both subjects and objects.
The example in (30) shows the subject marker (sm) agreeing in noun class 1 with the class 1 sub-
ject mama ‘mother’, with an object marker (om) also on the verb agreeing with the class 2 object
watoto ‘children.’

(30) a. Mama a-li-wa-ona wa-toto. Swahili

1mother 1sm-pst-2om-see 2-children
‘Mother saw the children.’
b. Wa-toto wa-li-mw-ona mama w-ao.
2-children 2sm-pst-1om-see 1mother 1-their
‘The children saw their mother.’

This example also illustrates the tense-marking on finite verbs that occurs in Swahili, the past
tense li- prefix. The sentences in (31) are the same as (30a) but in different tenses:
Chapter 2: Grammatical categories 55

(31) a. Mama a-na-wa-ona wa-toto. Swahili

1Mother 1sm-pRes-2om-see 2-children
‘Mother is seeing the children.’
b. Mama a-ta-wa-ona wa-toto. Swahili
1Mother 1sm-fut-2om-see 2-children
‘Mother will see the children.’

Being inflected with tense and agreement is not a condition for being a verb, of course. It
is just a typical property in many languages. There are some languages that don’t inflect verbs at
all, such as Mandarin; the verbs in (32) all take the same form despite being in different tenses.
Distinctions in time are communicated in other ways, such as the temporal adverbs in (32).

(32) Verbs lack inflection in Mandarin

a. 我 今天 去 看 电影。
wǒ jīntiān qù kàn diànyíng.
I today go see movie
‘I’m going to see a movie today.’
b. 我 昨天 去 看 电影。
wǒ zuótiān qù kàn diànyíng.
I yesterday go see movie
‘I went to see a movie yesterday.’
c. 我 明天 去 看 电影。
wǒ míngtiān qù kàn diànyíng.
I tomorrow go see movie
‘I’m going to see a movie tomorrow.’

Even in languages like English and Swahili there are constructions as in (33) where there is no
tense or agreement inflected on the verb.

(33) a. I let [my mom watch the children]

b. N-a-taka [ ku-leta zawadi ]
1sg.sm-pRes-want inf-bring gifts
‘I want to bring gifts.’

Tables 2.2 and 2.3 offer some summaries of the syntactic and morphological distributional
properties of verbs in English. The discussion here just calls out some major cross-linguistic
patterns, but the particulars of what distinguishes a verb from a noun (or something else) will
vary from language to language. This introduction should serve our current purposes, though,
of establishing some baseline expectations regarding properties of verbs.
Chapter 2: Grammatical categories 56

2.3.3 Adjectives
Adjectives vs. modifiers
In the teaching of high school English in the U.S., the terms “adjective” and “modifier” seem to be
used relatively interchangeably. From the point of view of linguistic theory, this usage reflects a
lamentable lack of appreciation for the central linguistic distinction between function and form.
Modifiers are linguistic expressions that serve a certain function—namely, to restrict or qualify
some other expression. Adjectives, on the other hand, are members of a syntactic category that
is defined by certain formal properties. For instance, it is possible to derive adverbs from many
adjectives (heavy, heavily; mere, merely; rough, roughly; sweet, sweetly).
There is no one-to-one relation between modifiers and adjective phrases. Modifiers are not
necessarily adjective phrases, as illustrated in (34): each of the italicized phrases are modifers,
but only the first is an adjective phrase.

(34) a. Adjective phrase:

a very aggressive driver
b. Adverb phrase:
They drive very aggressively.
c. Prepositional phrase:
the desk next to the window
They arrived on time.
d. Noun phrase:
They will arrive Monday night

Conversely, adjective phrases are not necessarily modifiers. For instance, the adjective
phrase in (35) is the predicate of a simple clause.

(35) This candidate is very suitable.

Adnominal versus predicative use

In English, adjective phrases that modify a noun typically occur in prenominal position.

(36) a. a very big box, this blue book

b. * a box very big, this book blue

However, there are other languages that typically require adjectival modifiers of nouns to be
postnominal. The examples in (37) are from French.10

(37) a. une chaise très confortable, ce livre bleu

a chair very comfortable this book blue
b. * une très confortable chaise, ce bleu livre
a very comfortable chair this blue book
Chapter 2: Grammatical categories 57

A convenient cover term for ‘prenominal’ and ‘postnominal’ is adnominal. It is worth

noting that certain adjectives can only be used adnominally, and not predicatively.

(38) a. the mere fact, her utter surprise

b. * The fact is mere, Her surprise was utter

The postnominal use of adjective phrases should not be confused with their predicative use, as
illustrated above in (35).
In many languages, adjectives inflect to match the features of the nominal that they modify.
In the Spanish (39) and Swahili (40) examples below, the adjectives small and big inflect to match
the gender/noun class of the nominal.

(39) sill-a pequeñ-a ; libr-o pequeñ-o Spanish

chair-f small-f book-m small-m
‘small chair; small book’

(40) m-tu m-kubwa ; ki-tabu ki-kubwa ; ∅-nyumba ∅-kubwa Swahili

1-person 1-big 7-book 7-big 9-house 9-big
‘big person; big book; big house’

Despite adjectives sometimes bearing phi-features, they don’t inherently bear phi-features:
the phi-features they bear are dependent on the nominal they are modifying. Therefore we still
view phi-features as lexical properties of nominals, not adjectives.

2.3.4 Adverbs
The last major lexical category we will cover are adverbs, though we will also address other kinds
of adverbial modifiers here too. Roughly speaking, adverbs modify verb phrases and sentences.
In English 4th grade grammar these are often identified as words that end in -ly, as listed in (41a),
but English is also rich in adverbs that do not end in -ly (41b):

(41) Selected English adverbs:

a. quickly, slowly, poorly, happily, sadly, early, accidentally, cheerfully, usually, fre-
quently, honestly, frankly
b. well, today, tomorrow, yesterday, always, never, fast, hard, late, soon, often, sometimes

In the same way we referred to forms of adnominal modification above, there are forms
of adverbial modification that don’t themselves involve adverbs. So we will at times refer to
adverbial modifiers that are not themselves adverbs: prepositional phrases are common (42a),
as are noun phrases (42b):

(42) a. I will go to town [PP in the morning ] .

b. I will go to town [NP the day after tomorrow ] .

So we can see that not all elements participating in adverbial modification are themselves
from the grammatical category that we call adverbs. In fact, adverbs as a class are in fact some-
what poorly named, as they often modify sentences, not verbs themselves. Arguably some adverbs
Chapter 2: Grammatical categories 58

do modify verbs or verb phrases. But many other kinds of adverbs clearly modify sentences as a
whole. The adverbs in (43) are generally thought to be modifying verb phrases.

(43) a. I read the book quickly last week.

b. I built that table poorly.
c. I made enchiladas yesterday.

In contrast, the adverbs in (44) all do not directly modify a verb phrase (e.g. telling the time or
manner or place that something happened), and instead describe a speaker’s stance toward’s the
sentence that they uttered: it’s relative likelihood (modal adverbs), the strength of evidence sup-
porting the claim (evidential), or a speaker’s evaluation of the proposition being reported.

(44) Selected sentential adverbs (Ernst 2014)

a. Epistemic adverbs:
i. modal: probably, certainly, possibly, maybe, definitely, necessarily, perhaps
ii. evidential: obviously, clearly, evidently, allegedly
b. Evaluative adverbs: (un)fortunately, mysteriously, tragically, appropriately, signifi-
cantly

Adverbs play a highly significant role in syntactic analysis, and in unexpected ways. It
turns out that the syntactic position of adverbs varies, but is highly predictable based on their
semantics. So adverbs describing the manner that an event happened in tend to modify the verb
phrase (in English, this means they occur towards the right of a sentence). Adverbs that are
speaker-oriented, however, modify the sentence as whole—in English, they appear towards the
left edge of the sentence.

(45) Lilly obviously needs a bath today.

Understanding the position of adverbs can then be very helpful in analyzing syntactic puz-
zles: if we know where an adverb is expected to occur, we can use that knowledge to analyze the
structure of a construction we are curious about. We will see adverbs used in precisely this way
in Chapter 12.

Major functional categories 2.4

In contrast to lexical categories that are those normally considered rich in real-world meaning,
functional categories either have minimal semantic content or have much more restricted inter-
pretations. Functional categories are normally closed classes, and therefore have much smaller
inventories within each class. We will spend less time on functional categories than we did for
lexical categories, as much of the course will be spent clarifying their properties. But it will be
Chapter 2: Grammatical categories 59

useful to be on the same page regarding basic terminology. We will focus our discussion on
English at the moment.
Determiners are elements that introduce noun phrases. This includes the traditional so-
called ‘articles’ like a(n) and the, but in English also includes demonstratives like this and
that.
(46) a book; the book; these books
Quantifiers are grammatical elements that quantify nominals—that is to say, they com-
municate something about the amount of a thing (for mass nouns) or number of things (for count
nouns).
(47) Selected English quantifiers:
every, any, no, few, many, some
(48) Every student attended class today.
Pronouns are a category of elements that can substitute for noun phrases. Regular pro-
nouns like me, they, and it substitute for noun phrases. Possessive pronouns represent possessors
or entire possessive noun phrases: these are forms like her(s), my, mine, and their(s).
We use the term complementizer for morphemes that introduce subordinate clauses (they
are sometimes referred to as subordinators).
(49) Selected English complementizers:
that, whether, if, since, until, after
(50) a. I know that Liverpool will win the Cup.
b. I wonder whether Chelsea will ever be good again.
One final functional category that we’ll mention at the moment are prepositions, which are
used in many languages to describe locations (among other functions).
(51) Selected English prepositions:
with, under, beside, in, next to, up, down, across, around, at, off, toward
(52) Sample English prepositional phrases:
a. up the hill
b. down the mountain
c. at the house
d. across the ocean
These are just a small selection of grammatical categories that appear in English, let alone
the world’s languages. We discuss auxiliary verbs and modals at length in the next section, which
are common functional categories in syntax. But in fact, there is vast variation between languages
in the kinds of functional grammatical categories they possess, and what their specific proper-
ties are. We will expand our understanding of the functional categories of human languages
throughout the book.
Chapter 2: Grammatical categories 60

Abstract categories: Inflection as a case study 2.5

We discuss some additional grammatical categories in this section, again focused on English for
our present purposes as it allows us to use a familiar language to motivate the more abstract con-
cepts. We introduce a group of grammatical categories that are connected with a more abstract
category, that of finite inflection of a clause. We show how varied properties of verbs, auxiliaries,
and modals in English all point to an important underlying property of the clause, the presence
of the abstract category of Inflection (Infl).

2.5.1 Modals
Historically, English modals, which are listed in (53), derive from a special class of verbs in Proto-
Germanic (the ancestor of English and the other Germanic languages).

(53) English modals:

can, could, may, might, must, shall, should, will, would

Modals have always differed from ordinary verbs in Germanic, and over the history of
English, they have diverged even further, to the point where they now behave as a grammatical
category of their own. Because the modals have meanings that are often expressed in other
languages by verbal inflections, this category has been called I(nflection).

Morphology of modals
Modals differ markedly from verbs in the range of forms that they exhibit. English verbs appear
in a number of distinct forms (see § 2.9.1 for details), whereas modals have a single, invariant
form.
Modals never end in -s. even in sentences with third person singular subjects.

(54) a. ✔ She { can, may } play the piano.

b. * She { can-s, may-s } play the piano.

Modals also lack productive past tense forms. It is true that could, might, should, and would
originated in Germanic as past tense forms of can, may, shall, and will. But today, only could can
serve as the past tense of can, and that only in certain contexts.11
Chapter 2: Grammatical categories 61

Example Potential paraphrase

Nowadays, you can get one for a dollar. = Nowadays, it is possible to get one for a dollar.
Back then, you could get one for a dollar. = Back then, it was possible to get one for a dollar.
We can go there tomorrow. = It is possible for us to go there tomorrow.
We could go there tomorrow. ≠ It was possible for us to go there tomorrow.
You may ask the boss. = You are allowed to ask the boss.
You might ask the boss. ≠ You were allowed to ask the boss.
Shall I pick up some bread? = Is it a good idea for me to pick up some bread?
Should I pick up some bread? ≠ Was it a good idea for me to pick up some bread?

Table 2.6: Lack of productive past tense forms for English modals

English modals also do not have nonfinite forms the way that verbs do (infinitives, -ing
forms, past participles). We attempt (ungrammatical) paraphrases here to show what they possi-
bly could have been, to illustrate the differences with verbs. We also provide a paraphrase with
a verbal form (be able to) that shares meaning with the modal considered here (can) to show that
the meaning itself is unproblematic.
English verbs can appear (untensed) after a modal, but modals cannot follow other modals
in the same way in Mainstream U.S. English:

(55) Infinitive after (another) modal:

a. * They must can speak Spanish. (modal)
b. ✔ They must be able to speak Spanish. (paraphrase of modal)
c. ✔ They must speak Spanish. (verb)

Similarly, the infinitive marker to can precede untensed verbs, but cannot precede modals.

(56) Infinitive after infinitival to:

a. * They want to can speak Spanish. (modal)
b. ✔ They want to be able to speak Spanish. (paraphrase of modal)
c. ✔ They want to speak Spanish. (verb)

The -ing morphology that makes a gerund (a nominal form of a verb) is acceptable on verbs, but
unacceptable on modals.

(57) -ing as gerund:

a. * They like { cann-ing, may-ing } play the piano. (modal)
b. ✔ They like { being able, being allowed } to play the piano. (paraphrase of modal)
c. ✔ They like learning to play the piano. (verb)

Finally, the past participle form that appears with the auxiliary verb have (have … V-ed) is gram-
matical with verbs, but ungrammatical with modals.
Chapter 2: Grammatical categories 62

(58) Past participle:

a. * They have { cann-ed, may-ed } play the piano. (modal)
b. ✔ They have { been able, been allowed } to play the piano. (paraphrase of modal)
c. ✔ They have learned to play the piano. (verb)

In short, despite deriving from more verb-like forms historically, in contemporary Eng-
lish (specifically Mainstream U.S. English) modals are a distinct grammatical category from
verbs.

Syntax of modals
The loss of nonfinite forms for modals gives rise to three further differences between verbs and
modals, all of them manifestations of an important phenomenon in the grammar of modern Eng-
lish called do support.
In the simplest case, emphatic do appears in affirmative sentences whose truth is being
emphasized. It involves replacing the finite verb by the verb’s bare form and adding a form of
auxiliary do to the sentence in the appropriate tense (either present or past tense). This form of
do then receives emphatic stress, as indicated by underlining in (59).

(59) a. ✔ He dances; she sang. (unemphatic, without do support)

b. ✔ He does dance; she did sing. (emphatic, with do support)

By contrast, emphasizing the truth of a sentence with a modal is achieved by simply stress-
ing the modal, and emphatic do is ungrammatical with modals.

(60) a. ✔ He can dance; she will sing. (emphasis without do support)

b. * He does can dance; she does will sing. (emphasis with do support)

Emphatic do therefore is another construction where differences emerge between modals and
verbs.
Another such difference emerges in negated sentences. Negated sentences without modals
require do support in modern English, i.e. the addition of the auxiliary do that does not appear in
declarative sentences. As in the case of emphasis above, the verb appears in its bare form, and an
appropriately tensed form of auxiliary do is added to the sentence, followed by negation.

(61) a. ✔ She { does, did } not dance. (negation with do support)

b. * She not { dances, danced }. (negation without do support)
* She { dances, danced } not.

By contrast, English sentences containing modals are negated by simply adding not (or its
contracted form -n’t) after the modal. Do support is ungrammatical.

(62) a. ✔ He { may, must, should, will, would } not dance. (negation without do support)
b. * He does not { may, must, should, will, would } dance. (negation with do support)
Chapter 2: Grammatical categories 63

The final syntactic difference between modals and verbs concerns question formation. If
a declarative sentence contains a modal, the corresponding question is formed by inverting the
modal with the subject. Do support is ungrammatical.

(63) a. ✔ { Can, may, must, should, will, would } he dance? (question without do support)
b. * Does he { can, may, must, should, will, would } dance? (question with do support)

In a sentence without a modal, question formation requires do support. That is, it is an

appropriately tensed form of do, rather than the verb itself, that inverts with the subject.

(64) a. ✔ { Does, did } she dance? (question with do support)

b. * { Dances, danced } she? (question without do support)

Across the board, then, we can see that modals are not verb-like in many ways in modern
Mainstream U.S. English. It is reasonable to describe them as their own grammatical category,
and linguists often do. But what we will see in what follows here is that there are multiple ways
that modals are a part of a superceding grammatical category as well.

2.5.2 Auxiliary verbs in English

English has three auxiliary verbs, each homophonous with an ordinary verb: be, do, and
have.

Auxiliary do
The goal of the previous section was to establish the special status of modals, and we used the
facts of do support as a criterion for distinguishing modals from verbs. In this section, we con-
sider some of the same facts, but with a different focus. Rather than focusing on the distinctive
properties of modals, we focus on the morphological and syntactic properties of auxiliary do
itself.
A major difference between auxiliary do and the modals is that it has an -s form. In this
respect, it patterns with ordinary verbs, including its main verb counterpart.

(65) Modal:
a. I can dance the polka.
b. He { can, * can-s } dance the polka.

(66) Auxiliary do (emphasis, negation, question):

a. I do dance the polka. I do not dance the polka. Do you dance the polka?
b. She do-es dance the polka. She do-es not dance the polka. Do-es she dance the polka?

It’s important to distinguish another use of do in English, that of a main verb: we will see
the same for other auxiliaries in English as well. When do is a main verb, it can be the only verb
in a sentence:
Chapter 2: Grammatical categories 64

(67) Main verb do:

a. I do the dishes.
b. He do-es the dishes.

(68) Ordinary lexical verb:

a. I dance the polka.
b. She dance-s the polka.

In this main verb usage, do can co-occur with a modal, just like other lexical verbs can.

(69) a. I can do the dishes.

b. She can dance the polka.

We will treat main verb do and auxiliary do as separate grammatical elements that are
homophonous (are pronounced the same way).
In many other respects, auxiliary do behaves (syntactically) like a modal rather than an
ordinary verb. In particular, it does not occur in nonfinite (untensed) contexts. Notice the clear
contrast between the judgments for auxiliary do in (71) and main verb do in (72).12

(70) Modal:
a. * They will can dance the polka. (after another modal)
b. * They want to can dance the polka. (after infinitival to)
c. * Their canning dance the polka while blindfolded is unusual. (gerund)
(71) Auxiliary do (emphasis):
a. * They will do dance the polka. (after another modal)
Intended meaning: It will be the case they do dance the polka.
b. * They claim to do dance the polka. (after infinitival to)
Intended meaning: They claim that they do dance the polka.
c. * Their doing dance the polka while blindfolded is unwise. (gerund)
Intended meaning: That they do dance the polka while blindfolded is unwise.

(72) Main verb do:

a. ✔ They will do the dishes. (after another modal)
b. ✔ They want to do the dishes. (after infinitival to)
c. ✔ Their doing the dishes was considerate. (gerund)
(73) Ordinary verb:
a. ✔ They will dance the polka. (after another modal)
b. ✔ They want to dance the polka. (after infinitival to)
c. ✔ Their dancing the polka while blindfolded is unwise. (gerund)

The main lesson here is that auxiliary do is not a main verb, and is not a modal, though it
shares a number of properties with modals. The next two auxiliaries that we consider are also
distinct from main verbs but show further distinctions from modals as well.
Chapter 2: Grammatical categories 65

Auxiliary have
Let’s now turn to auxiliary have, which combines with past participles to form the perfective
forms of verbs, for example, a sentence like (74). Perfective aspect takes an external viewpoint
on the event being reported, that is to say, in (74) the speaker’s viewpoint on the event is external
to the event, considering the event to be complete (and here, in the past).

(74) The children have eaten lunch.

Auxiliary have behaves like a V with respect to its morphology and its occurrence in non-
finite contexts. (75) and (76) show that auxiliary have, like auxiliary do (cf. (66)), behaves mor-
phologically like its main verb counterpart in having an -s form.

(75) Auxiliary have:

a. I have adopted two cats.
b. He ha-s adopted two cats.
(76) Main verb have:
a. I have two cats.
b. He ha-s two cats.

Auxiliary have differs from auxiliary do (compare (71)) and resembles main verbs in be-
ing able to appear in uninflected (nonfinite) contexts, ex., selected by a modal (a examples), in
infinitive contexts (b examples) and as a gerund selected by a verb like regret.

(77) Auxiliary have:

a. ✔ They must have adopted two cats. (after modal)
b. ✔ They claim to have adopted two cats. (after infinitival to)
c. ✔ They do not regret having adopted two cats. (gerund)
(78) Main verb have:
a. ✔ They must have two cats. (after modal)
b. ✔ They claim to have two cats. (after infinitival to)
c. ✔ They do not regret having two cats. (gerund)

However, just like modals (cf. (ii)) and in contrast to main verb have, auxiliary have is ruled out
in do support contexts, i.e. the contexts where do is inserted.

(79) Auxiliary have:

a. ✔ He HAS adopted two cats. (emphasis)
b. ✔ He hasn’t adopted two cats. (negation)
c. ✔ Has he adopted two cats? (question)

(80) Auxiliary have incompatible with do-support:

a. * He does have adopted two cats. (emphasis)
b. * He doesn’t have adopted two cats. (negation)
Chapter 2: Grammatical categories 66

c. * Does he have adopted two cats? (question)

(81) Main verb have:

a. ✔ She does have two cats. (emphasis)
b. ✔ She doesn’t have two cats. (negation)
c. ✔ Does she have two cats? (question)

Therefore we can see that auxiliary have behaves similarly to modals and auxiliary do, in-
verting in questions and being stressed in emphatic contexts. Likewise, auxiliary have is incom-
patible with adding do-support to a sentence in negation and questions. But it is also fundamen-
tally different from modals and auxiliary do, in that there is an uninflected version of the auxiliary
that can co-occur with modals, similar to a main verb. So inflected auxiliary have behaves like
modals and auxiliary do, but uninflected have behaves more like a main verb.

Auxiliary be
The auxiliary be is used to form the progressive (is coming, was dancing).13 Auxiliary be behaves
just like auxiliary have with respect to the properties we have been considering. In particular,
it has an inflected form (irregular though that form is), it can appear in nonfinite (uninflected)
contexts, but it is excluded from do support contexts. Note, all of these examples are specifi-
cally about Mainstream U.S. English; some varieties of English have another be auxiliary with
additional functions.
(82) and (83) show that auxiliary be has inflected forms (unlike modals, and like auxiliary do)
but also has uninflected forms (like auxiliary have and main verbs, but unlike auxiliary do).

(82) Auxiliary be has inflected forms:

a. ✔ They are learning Spanish. They are invited to the ceremony. (non-third person)
b. ✔ He is learning Spanish. He is invited to the ceremony. (third person)

(83) Auxiliary be has uninflected forms:

a. ✔ They must be learning Spanish. (after modal)
b. ✔ They must be invited to the ceremony.
c. ✔ They claim to be learning Spanish. (after infinitival to)
d. ✔ They claim to be invited to the ceremony.
e. ✔ They don’t regret being invited to the ceremony. (gerund)

(84) Auxiliary verb be, with emphasis, negation, and questions:

a. ✔ He IS learning Spanish. They ARE invited to the ceremony. (emphasis)
b. ✔ He isn’t learning Spanish. They aren’t invited to the ceremony. (negation)
c. ✔ Is he learning Spanish? Are they invited to the ceremony? (question)
Chapter 2: Grammatical categories 67

(85) Auxiliary verb be without emphatic do or do-support:

a. * He DOES be learning Spanish. They DO be invited to the ceremony. (emphasis)
b. * He doesn’t be learning Spanish. They aren’t be invited to the ceremony. (negation)
c. * Does he be learning Spanish? Do they be invited to the ceremony? (question)

These properties are essentially the same as auxiliary have. Main verb be in English behaves
differently from other main verbs: see Problem 2.7 for an exploration of this.

Summary
Table 2.7 provides a synopsis of the morphological and syntactic properties of the items that we
have discussed, arranged from most to least verb-like. As is evident from the table, the syntac-
tic category of an item depends on whether it is the verb-like or the modal-like properties that
predominate.

Ordinary verb Auxiliary have/be Auxiliary do Modal

Has -s form yes yes yes no
Occurs in nonfinite contexts yes yes no no
Occurs with emphatic do yes no no no
Occurs with do in negation yes no no no
inverts with subjects in questions no yes yes yes
Syntactic category V V I I

Table 2.7: Summary of morphological and syntactic properties of ordinary verbs, auxiliaries
verbs, and modals in English

Clearly there is a lot of complexity to the syntactic and morphological properties of aux-
iliaries in Mainstream U.S. English. There is a line in the table above (syntactic category) that is
thus far unexplained: we will discuss this in the next section.

2.5.3 Inflection as a grammatical category

This section previews a conclusion that will be impactful in our analysis of sentences throughout
the rest of the book: Inflection is a syntactically significant grammatical category, and plays a
significant role in the structure of clauses.
Even though Table 2.7 summarizes the properties explained in the previous section, it can
still be hard to see an overarching pattern emerge. But in fact, a very strong pattern emerges:
modals, auxiliary do, and inflected be/have all share the same properties. Uninflected auxiliaries
behave like main verbs.
To bring us there, first notice that modals are in complementary distribution with in-
flection, whether that inflection is on an auxiliary (86c) or on a main verb (87c).

(86) a. The child is running. tensed auxiliary

Chapter 2: Grammatical categories 68

b. The child can be running. modal

c. * The child can is running. modal and tensed aux.

(87) a. The child ran. tensed main verb

b. The child can run. modal
c. * The child can ran. modal and tensed main verb

Likewise, inflection on an auxiliary rules out inflection on a main verb.

(88) a. The child ran. tensed main verb

b. The child has run. tensed aux.
c. * The child has ran. tensed aux. and tensed main verb

The complementary distribution diagnostic alone is a strong argument that inflection and modals
are underlying the same category. This is the same diagnostic that is used in phonology (and
learned in many introductory linguistics classes) to identify two phones as realizations of the
same phoneme. Here, the complementary distribution of modals and inflection suggests that
they both realize the same (abstract) category.
We see a similar pattern with our other diagnostics. What is it that inverts to sentence
initial position in questions? We can see that it is either modals (89) or inflected auxiliaries (90):
uninflected auxiliaries cannot invert (89c).

(89) a. The child should be running.

b. Should the child be running?
c. * Be the child should running.

(90) a. The child is running.

b. Is the child running?

Both inversion and inflection suggest that modals and inflected auxiliaries behave the same.
So it is no surprise, perhaps, that auxiliary do (which is always inflected) cannot co-occur with
inflection on other verbs/auxiliaries, and cannot co-occur with modals.

(91) a. The child did run.

b. * The child did ran.
c. The child might run.
d. * The child might did run.

The conclusion here is that auxiliary do, inflection, and modals all behave similarly in Mainstream
U.S. English. They are in complementary distribution (only one instance of any of them may occur
in a sentence) and they share properties like appearing before negation and inverting with sub-
jects in questions, properties that are not shared by main verbs or uninflected auxiliaries.
Syntacticians have concluded that all of these elements are instances of the same abstract
grammatical category, which we will refer to as Inflection, or Infl for short. In chapters that
Chapter 2: Grammatical categories 69

are upcoming we will see how this is realized in a clause structure (and there are definitely open
questions for which solutions aren’t obvious from our discussion thus far).14 The takeaway les-
son here, however, is the one focused on grammatical categories: grammatical categories can be
abstract, and not every significant grammatical category in a language will be one that is con-
sciously obvious to native speakers, or one which is taught in schools (for languages that have
formal instruction in schools). And some categories subsume others: it is reasonable to talk about
modals and auxiliaries as categories of their own in some ways (modals and auxiliaries are not
identical, even modals and tensed auxiliaries are not identical). But in Mainstream U.S. English
they do all behave syntactically as a single category, which we can call Infl.

On the (non-)universality of grammatical categories 2.6

Generative syntax as we describe in this book is focused on universal questions: what is Universal
Grammar? Put more descriptively, what are the universal, innate properties of human cognition
that result in a child learning any human language? We explore this by exploring the grammatical
properties of human languages and seeing what is consistent among them, and what varies among
them.
One potential universal is that all human languages appear to have something like verbs
and something like nouns: this has been explicitly proposed at times, or simply assumed in many
analyses. But the individual properties of verbs and nouns can vary a lot between particular
languages, such that it’s difficult to pin down specific properties that can dependably diagnose a
noun and verb cross-linguistically. For example, some concepts that are expressed by adjectives
in English are expressed by verbs in Bantu languages. The Swahili sentences in (92) are verbs
(with subject agreement and tense), whereas their translations in English are adjectives.
(92) a. Ni-me-furahi.
1sg.agR-pRf-be.happy
‘I am happy.’
b. M-zigo u-li-tosha.
3-load 3agR-pst-be.sufficient
‘The load was sufficient.’
Therefore, translations from one language to another can be highly unreliable to reveal categori-
cal properties of language without additional consideration: grammatical categories must be de-
termined according to the systematic properties of each language itself. Likewise, it is relatively
uncontroversial, insofar as we can tell, that the specific morphological and syntactic properties of
categories will vary based on languages. So some languages inflect verbs highly, some not at all;
some languages inflect nominals robustly for noun class, gender, or case-marking (see Chapter
9), but others don’t. So the specific meanings and specific grammatical properties that identify a
category will vary language by language.
Chapter 2: Grammatical categories 70

But it has even been claimed at many points that some languages lack clear categorical dis-
tinctions between major categories, even between nouns and verbs. Even in English it is possible
to convert nouns to verbs with no overt morphology. In the current age of technology, names
of products often get converted to verbs, as in (93a) and (93b). This is of course a quite general
process in English, such as the use of address in (93c); the examples listed in (94) are an entirely
non-exhaustive list of English words that function as both verbs and nouns. The comic strip artist
Bill Watterson offered his commentary on this process in a Calvin and Hobbes comic strip with
the sentence in (93d).

(93) a. Let’s google that.

b. We need to uber to the airport.
c. We used to have to address envelopes and affix a stamp.
d. Verbing weirds language. (from a Calvin and Hobbes cartoon)

(94) a. access e. silence i. mine m. fall

b. mail f. arrest j. slice n. move
c. shelter g. milk k. slide o. smile
d. dust h. exhibit l. bandage p. grill

In addition, some linguists have argued that there are languages that lack these underlying
grammatical categories altogether. In the Turkish the same lexical item can be used as a nominal
(95a), an attributive adjective (95b), or an adverbial (95c).

(95) Turkish (Hengeveld 2013, 33, original examples from Göksel and Kerslake 2005)
a. güzel-im
beauty-1.poss
‘my beauty’ (head of referential phrase)
b. güzel bir köpek
beauty art dog
‘a beautiful dog’ (modifier of head of referential phrase)
c. Güzel konuş-tu-Ø.
beauty speak-pst-3sg
‘S/he spoke well.’ (modifier of head of predicate phrase)

Some linguists take the strongest stance that there are no universal categories (ex., Haspel-
math 2007, 2010). Some such linguists are typological and/or descriptive linguists who are skep-
tical of the notion of Universal Grammar, but even linguists working within the framework of
Universal Grammar have posited that grammatical categories of various sorts are emergent, that
is, that they arise from a combination of other aspects of human cognition and language expe-
rience, rather than an innate inventory of categories. To our knowledge, all linguists affirm the
existence of categories within the grammar of individual human languages, which means that
what must be universal, on this approach, is the ability to form and use grammatical categories,
rather than any particular categories themselves (Biberauer 2019a, 2019b; Wiltschko 2014; Croft
2001).
Chapter 2: Grammatical categories 71

When functional categories are considered, much more variation appears across languages.
Even if English, for example, has a category of elements called modals that has specific properties,
this does not mean that all languages have a similar category (despite all languages being able to
communicate modal contexts like probability and obligation). For example, Korean systematically
integrates politeness and social hierarchy into its grammar via grammatical morphemes known
as honorifics (hon in the examples below). Notice two different kinds of honorific marking in
the examples below. The nominal sensayng ‘teacher’ bears an honorific recognizing teachers’
socially elevated position in (96b) and (96d). But the verbs also bear honorific marking in each
example, marking that varies based on the addressee (who the speaker is talking to). Speaking to
a close friend is marked as an informal declarative (statement); speaking to a coworker is labeled
similarly, but a politeness morpheme (pol) is added; speaking to a superior at work requires an
even more polite morpheme we have glossed as foRmal here.15

(96) a. 민지가 나에게 빵을 줬어.

Minci -ka na-eykey ppang-ul cw-ess -e.
Minji-nom I-dat bread-acc give-pst-dec.infoRmal
‘Minji gave me bread.’ (to a close friend)
b. 선생님께서 나에게 빵을 주셨어.
sensayng -nim-kkeyse na-eykey ppang-ul cwu-sy-ess -e.
teacher-hon-nom.hon I-dat bread-acc give-hon-pst-dec.infoRmal
‘The teacher gave me bread.’ (to a close friend)
c. 민지씨가 저에게 빵을 줬어요.
Minci -ssi-ka ce-eykey ppang-ul cw-ess -e-yo .
Minji-pol-nom I.humble-dat bread-acc give-pst-dec.infoRmal-pol
‘Minji gave me bread.’ (to a coworker)
d. 선생님께서 저에게 빵을 주셨어요.
sensayng -nim-kkeyse ce-eykey ppang-ul cwu-sy-ess -e-yo .
teacher-hon-nom.hon I.humble-dat bread-acc give-hon-pst-dec.infoRmal-pol
‘The teacher gave me bread.’ (to a coworker)
e. 민지씨가 저에게 빵을 주었습니다.
Minci -ssi-ka ce-eykey ppang-ul cwu-ess -supni-ta .
Minji-pol-nom I.humble-dat bread-acc give-pst-foRmal-dec
‘Minji gave me bread.’ (to a superior at work)
f. 선생님께서 저에게 빵을 주셨습니다.
sensayng -nim-kkeyse ce-eykey ppang-ul cwu-sy-ess -supni-ta .
teacher-hon-nom.hon I.humble-dat bread-acc give-hon-pst-foRmal-dec
‘The teacher gave me bread.’ (to a superior at work)

A completely different example comes from evidentials: many languages have grammati-
cal morphemes attached to sentences that indicate the source of evidence for the statement being
uttered: how did the speaker come to learn the thing that they are saying? Evidential systems can
be relatively simple, such as distinguishing direct evidence from indirect evidence, but they can
also be relatively complex. Aikhenvald presents the minimal set from Tariana (Arawak, north-
west Amazonia) below, which varies just in the evidential marking on the verb.
Chapter 2: Grammatical categories 72

(97) Tariana evidentials Aikhenvald (2004, 2–3)

a. Juse iɾida di-manika -ka
José football 3sg.nf-play-Recp.pst.vis
‘José has played football (we saw it)’
b. Juse iɾida di-manika -mahka
José football 3sg.nf-play-Recp.pst.nonvis
‘José has played football (we heard it)’
c. Juse iɾida di-manika -nihka
José football 3sg.nf-play-Recp.pst.infR
‘José has played football (we infer it from visual evidence)’
d. Juse iɾida di-manika -sika
José football 3sg.nf-play-Recp.pst.assum
‘José has played football (we assume this on the basis of what we already know)’
e. Juse iɾida di-manika -pidaka
José football 3sg.nf-play-Recp.pst.Rep
‘José has played football (we were told)’

In each case above, a different choice of suffix on the verb communicates a different source of
evidence for the statement being uttered. Evidentiality in Tariana therefore has a grammatical-
ized implementation in Tariana, realizing its own grammatical category, that is not present in all
languages. All languages are of course capable of allowing a speaker to communicate the source
of their evidence, but not all languages have a specific grammatical category of evidential dedi-
cated to marking the distinction systematically (though many languages do have grammaticalized
evidentiality similar to Tariana).
The takeaway lesson here is important not just for understanding how languages work,
but also for theorizing about the nature of human language in cognition, that is, the nature of
Universal Grammar. It is tempting to overgeneralize from the small set of languages we may
have experience with. But there are approximately 10,000 languages in the world (the exact
number depends on how you count, and is always changing); we have detailed descriptions of
a fraction of those languages. Furthermore, there are robust research communities working in
only a handful of those well-described languages (by that we mean, communities of researchers
consistently generating new documentation and analysis of the languages). We don’t need to be
embarrassed by attempts to investigate what is universal about language: it is a major question
about cognition and human nature and is worthy of inspection. But we do need to be humble in
recognizing (1) the extent of language variation that is already documented, and (2) the number of
linguistic facts that are yet to be documented in the humanistic and scientific literature. The kind
of variation noted in this section is not the central purpose of this book, but there are textbooks
that emphasize this kind of morphosyntactic variation to a greater degree: we recommend the
interested reader to Kroeger (2005) and Croft (2022). But the perpetual exercise of the syntactician
is to investigate whether the theory we have built thus far readily extends (or not) to all human
languages, and we ought not be distressed when we learn that it doesn’t: we just adjust the model
and continue our work.
Insofar as grammatical categories go, in this textbook we assume labels for the commonly
attested categories (N, V, Adj, Adv, P, Comp, etc.) uncritically for the most part, for the purposes
 Chapter 2: Grammatical categories 73

of an introductory textbook. They are useful for quickly capturing the general properties of a
category, and allow for cross-linguistic comparison readily. But we don’t ever mean to imply
these are necessarily part of UG, or that they cannot be deconstructed to find deeper underlying
generalizations, or critiqued to find instances of variation in properties across languages. Both
research exercises should be expected by students continuing in the field of syntax.

New Empirical Observations

▶ Groups of morphosyntactic elements behave similarly to each other, showing con-

sistent patterns: we call these groupings grammatical categories.
▶ Morphemes have grammatical categories:
▷ functional vs. lexical morphemes
▷ open vs. closed classes
▶ Major lexical categories include:
• nouns
• verbs
• adjectives
• adverbs
▶ Inflection is a grammatical category.

Components of the Theoretical Model

▶ Morphemes, words, and phrases bear features, which may manifest as overt morpho-
logical forms.
▶ Some grammatical categories could be universal (as we treat them to be here) but
they may alternatively simply be emergent.
▶ Grammatical categories could also potentially emerge from deeper properties of lan-
guage and cognition.

Notes 2.7
1. The language varieties and segments of societies that drive language innovation in this way vary. In the U.S., African
American language is a common driver of linguistic innovation, with words first used in Black communities often
ending up as mainstream youth slang years later. In Kenya, the prominent use of Sheng by youth drives a lot of
linguistic innovation; Sheng is a language contact phenomenon that is highly locale-specific, as youth in a specific
area of a specific generation combine aspects of English, Swahili, and other local languages to generate a new vo-
cabulary (and sometimes arguably a new language), some aspects of which can end up in mainstream use of English
 Chapter 2: Grammatical categories 74

and Swahili.

2. To be clear, this is a language-particular sort of problem; in the Bantu language family containing approximately
800 languages, for example, the usual pattern is for all 3rd person pronouns to be unmarked for human gender (ex.,
masculine vs. feminine vs. other). It is not universal (or necessary, from a linguistic perspective) to mark human
gender on pronouns, but the fact that English does has created this particular social history.

3. Back in the bad old days when singular they was not widely accepted in academic writing (or anywhere), my (Diercks)
literature professor in college (James Wardwell) used to rant about the he or she and him or her circumlocutions as
horrible writing. His recommendation was, for each sentence/sequence, to choose either he/him or she/her. As he
said it, you should generally vary the choice of pronoun in your writing and hope that in the great cosmic reckoning
it ends up that you were equitable, choosing masculine and feminine at roughly equal rates. Needless to say, the
broader acceptance of singular they is very welcome, for a multitude of reasons.

4. Neological pronouns (more often ‘neopronouns’) like ze/zim still have some currency among certain communities
and online spaces, but don’t have the same widespread traction singular they has garnered; in 2019 Merriam-Webster
anointed singular they as its Word of the Year, demonstrating the mainstreaming of its use in that function.

5. This in turn has spawned a large collection of regionalisms and variations to distinguish singular and plural you,
such as you guys, y’all, y’inz, youse, and you-uns, among others.

6. Credit with gratitude to The Office’s Andy Bernard.

7. Although the distinction between count and mass nouns is generally clear-cut, under special circumstances, what
are ordinarily mass nouns in English can be used as count nouns—for instance, when it is possible to impose an
interpretation of a kind of X or a salient quantity of X on the mass noun. Notice, incidentally, that the interpretation
of the plural mass nouns in (i.b) depends on whether we refers to a group of coffee shop customers (salient quantity
reading) or to a business owner (salient kind reading).

(i) a. Different rices have different cooking times.

b. We ordered four coffees and two teas.

For some mass nouns, the conversion to count noun is very natural.

(ii) a. Mass noun use (basic):

a lot of wine, wine from Burgundy, more wine than we can drink tonight
b. Count noun use:
a wine from Alsace, wines from Burgundy, more wines than I had ever heard of

Conversely, it is possible for what are ordinarily count nouns to be pressed into service as mass nouns.

(iii) a. ?This recipe for carrot cake calls for { a lot of carrot, more carrot than I have on hand }
b. ?There’s just not enough couch for all ten of you.
c. 2nd Servant: Pray heauen it be not full of Knight againe.
1st Servant: I hope not, I had liefe as beare so much lead.
(William Shakespeare. Merry Wives of Windsor, Act 4, Scene 2.)
d. The article says that [Mr. Mangetout] once consumed fifteen pounds of bicycle in twelve days … Just
as an example, I have never eaten so much as a pound of bicycle. … I can see myself acting with
considerable restraint at a dinner party at which the main course, is, say, queen-size waterbed.
(Calvin Trillin. 1983. Third helpings. 3.)

Although the match between count and mass nouns across languages is reasonably good, mismatches occur.
Some examples of nouns that are mass nouns in English, but count nouns in other languages are given in (iv)–
(vi).
 Chapter 2: Grammatical categories 75

(iv) French:
a. un meuble, des meuble-s
a furniture.sg, of.the furniture-pl
‘a piece of furniture, furniture’
b. un renseignement, des renseignement-s
an information.sg, of.the information-pl
‘a piece of information, information’
(v) German:
a. ein Möbel, Möbel
a furniture.sg, furniture.pl
‘a piece of furniture, furniture’
b. ein Ratschlag, Ratschläg-e
an advice.sg, advice-pl
‘a piece of advice, advice’
c. eine Nachricht, Nachricht-en
a news.sg, news-pl
‘a piece of news, news’
(vi) Italian:
a. un consigli-o, consigl-i
an advice.sg, advice-pl
‘a piece of advice, advice’
b. una notizia, notizi-e
a news.sg, news-pl
‘a piece of news, news’

Not surprisingly, when learning English as a foreign language, speakers from these languages often produce
ungrammatical examples like (vii).

(vii) a. *They gave me some useful advices.

b. *The room was crowded with too many furnitures.
c. *Before I decide, I need some further informations.

8. A note on proper nouns with and without determiners: First, although proper nouns in English typically appear
without a determiner, certain proper nouns must be accompanied by the definite article. Some examples are given
in (i).

(i) the Bronx, the Hague, the Thames, the Titanic, the Soviet Union, the United States, the White House

Pronouns, on the other hand, can’t be accompanied by an article, as shown in (ii).

(ii) *the { you, he, she, it, we, they }

Given the contrast between (i) and (ii), the proper nouns in (i) can’t themselves be determiners, but must be
nouns, as English does not tolerate sequences of determiners. Even the misnomer view must therefore admit the
existence of nouns that refer to particular individual entities. But if the proper nouns in (i) are in fact nouns, then
there is no conceptual advantage in assuming that those in (24b) are determiners. Instead, we could simply take the
view that proper nouns are invariably nouns, but that some are complements of the ordinary overt definite article
the, whereas others are complements of a silent counterpart of it. In other words, the proper nouns in (24b) would
be structurally parallel to those in (i), as indicated in (iii).

(iii) a. Overt determiner:

the Bronx, the Hague, the Thames, the Titanic, …
Chapter 2: Grammatical categories 76

b. Silent determiner:
[def] Philadelphia, [def] Lassie, [def] France, …

Several additional pieces of evidence, all of the same type, point in the same direction. Before the breakup of
the Soviet Union, the Soviet republic whose capital is Kiev was called the Ukraine, but after the breakup, the newly
independent country began to be called Ukraine, without the article. Similarly, the United States is generally referred
to in Spanish as los Estados Unidos ‘the United States’, but in recent years, Latin American newspapers have begun
to omit the article los. According to the misnomer view, Ukraine and Estados Unidos would be nouns in the old usage
and turn into determiners in the new usage. Treating the change as affecting the pronunciation of the determiner is
clearly more straightforward.
In French, names of countries and regions must be accompanied by the definite article, whereas in English,
they generally aren’t (the change from the Ukraine to Ukraine thus eliminated its exceptional status in English).
Some examples are shown in (iv); la and le are the feminine and masculine forms of the French definite article,
respectively.

(iv) a. French:
la Bolivie, la Bourgogne, le Brésil, le Canada, le Danemark, la France, le Pérou
b. English:
Bolivia, Burgundy, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, France, Peru

According to the misnomer view, the names of countries and regions would be nouns in French but deter-
miners in English. Again, it seems more reasonable to pin the difference between the two languages not on the
nouns themselves, but on the status of the determiner.
In standard German, personal names stand alone in the standard language. But in the vernacular, they can
be accompanied by the definite article, as shown in (v); der and die are masculine and feminine forms of the German
definite article, respectively.

(v) a. Standard German:

Annemarie, Eva, Lukas, Peter
b. Vernacular German:
die Annemarie, die Eva, der Lukas, der Peter

According to the misnomer view, proper names would change syntactic category depending on the speaker’s
register, whereas the alternative view again more straightforwardly pins the variation on the determiner.
Finally, in modern Greek, personal names are normally accompanied by the definite article. This is shown
for the nominative in (vi); ο/o and η/i are masculine and feminine forms of the Greek definite article, respectively.
(“Nominative” is the form in which subjects of sentences appear: see Chapter 9.)

(vi) Greek, nominative:

η Ελένη, η Βάλια, ο Παύλος, ο Γιάννης
i Eleni, i Valia, o Pavlos, o Yannis

Modern Greek retains from its ancestor language Indo-European a special vocative case form that is used when
addressing someone. Masculine nouns lose their final -s in the vocative, and other nouns remain unchanged, but for
all nouns, the article is obligatorily absent in the vocative, as shown in (vii).16

(vii) Greek, vocative:

(*η) Ελένη, (*η) Βάλια, (*ο) Παύλος, (*ο) Γιάννης
(*i) Eleni, (*i) Valia, (*o) Pavlos, (*o) Yannis

Once again, under the misnomer view, names in Greek would change their syntactic category depending on their
case form—a bizarre consequence.
A second type of argument against the misnomer view of proper nouns is based on linguistic borrowing.
Speakers of one language often borrow words from another language, either because no native words exist for
 Chapter 2: Grammatical categories 77

certain concepts or because the borrowed word is perceived as having a cachet that the native counterparts lack.
Proper nouns are easily borrowed in this way; we need only to think of the many geographical names in English
derived from various indigenous languages. The prolific borrowing of proper nouns is not surprising if proper nouns
are a subcategory of nouns, since nouns are precisely the category that is most readily borrowed. But it is unexpected
under the misnomer view, since pronouns are ordinarily not borrowed at all.
On the basis of the considerations just discussed, we conclude, then, that proper nouns are a semantically
(and often syntactically) special subtype of noun.

9. This is an oversimplification (for many reasons): the most significant reason it is a simplification is that there are
stative predicates that are hard to describe as “events” that still take arguments. For example, in the sentence Lilly is
short the predicate short is stative, describe a state (not an event) and it still takes Lilly as an argument.

10. But even in English, adjective phrases can occur postnominally if they are ‘heavy’ enough, and even relatively short
adjectives are sometimes used postnominally to convey elegance or high style.

(i) a. ✔ an unlikely story

b. * an unlikely to be true story
(ii) a. *a story unlikely
b. ✔ a story unlikely to be true
(iii) House Beautiful (upscale interior decorating magazine)

Originally, English, like the other Germanic languages, allowed adjective phrase modifiers only in prenominal
position. After the Norman Conquest in 1066, Norman French became the official language of England and remained
so for several centuries. In Norman French, as in the other Romance languages, adjective phrase modifiers were
primarily postnominal. The word order variation illustrated in (36) and (i) and the stylistic connotations of the
postnominal order are thus the result of language contact. See also Note .
The situation in English is the reverse of that in Walloon, a variety of French spoken in Belgium. Unlike
in standard French, adjective phrases modifying nouns are prenominal in Walloon. This is the result of language
contact with Flemish, a variety of Germanic.

11. It is useful to distinguish between form (morphology) and meaning (reference). Ordinarily, forms with past-tense
morphology are used to refer to an event or state prior to the time of speaking. However, it is possible in English
to use past-tense forms to refer to events or states contemporaneous with a reported time of speaking; this is the
so-called sequence-of-tense phenomenon in reported speech, illustrated in (i).

(i) a. He said, “They know a lot”. (direct speech)

b. He said (that) they knew a lot. (reported speech)

As is evident from (ii) and (iii), can, may, shall, and will continue to maintain a productive morphological
relationship with could, might, should, and would, respectively, in sequence-of-tense contexts.

(ii) Direct speech:

a. She said, “That may be so”.
b. He told us, “You won’t last long”.
(iii) Reported speech:
a. She said (that) that might be so.
b. He told us (that) we wouldn’t last long.

Nevertheless, in keeping with the point made in the body of the text, the morphological relationship between
the modals in (ii) and their counterparts in (iii) is purely formal, lacking the referential underpinning evident in
(2.7).
 Chapter 2: Grammatical categories 78

(iv) a. They know a lot { ✔ now, * then }.

b. They knew a lot { * now, ✔ then }.

We thank Aaron Dinkin for drawing our attention to the sequence-of-tense phenomenon.

12. Auxiliary do also behaves like a modal in do support contexts. Double instances of auxiliary do are ruled out, just
like double modals are (see (58a)). Once again, auxiliary do and main verb do differ sharply, as shown in (ii) and
(iii).

(i) Modal:
a. *They does can dance the polka. (emphasis)
b. *They doesn’t can dance the polka. (negation)
c. *Does he can dance the polka? (question)
(ii) Auxiliary do:
a. *She does do dance the polka. (emphasis)
Intended meaning: It is the case that she does dance the polka.
b. *She doesn’t do dance the polka. (negation)
Intended meaning: It isn’t the case that she does dance the polka.
c. *Does she do dance the polka? (question)
Intended meaning: Is it the case that she does dance the polka?
(iii) Main verb do:
a. ✔ He does do the dishes. (emphasis)
b. ✔ He doesn’t do the dishes. (negation)
c. ✔ Does he do the dishes? (question)
(iv) Ordinary verb:
a. ✔ She does dance the polka. (emphasis)
b. ✔ She doesn’t dance the polka. (negation)
c. ✔ Does she dance the polka? (question)

13. A be auxiliary is also used to form passive sentences (is abandoned, was sold) in English. We ignore passives for
now; with regard to the properties we are currently discussing, the passive be auxiliary behaves the same as the
progressive be auxiliary. But they are not the same thing, which is evident in the fact that they can co-occur in the
same sentence: the salad is being prepared right now.

14. One of these is how it is that a modal—which is a free morpheme—and a morphological affix on a verb (like past
tense) can be the same grammatical category when they behave so differently morphologically-speaking. This is
not lost on linguists, of course—we will see discussion of this throughout the textbook, but especially in Chapters 9
and 12.

15. Readers familiar with Korean may notice other kinds of honorific marking in (96) that we have neglected to discuss
here (for example, the verbal subject honorific morpheme -sy-). Korean has a particularly rich system of honorifics
and politeness that, while fascinating, is too much to discuss fully here.

16. For the (*) notation, see the glossary entry asterisk (*).
Chapter 2: Grammatical categories 79

Exercises and problems 2.8

Exercise 2.1: Identifying grammatical categories A
Using the properties of English grammatical categories as described in this chapter, identify the
grammatical category of each of the bolded words below. For each one, describe the distributional
properties (syntactic or morphological) that lead to that conclusion.

(1) a. The children will hopefully sleep all night.

b. I poured the coffee into the cup.
c. I really want an apple.
d. I am going to clean the kitchen while the children are napping.
e. I am from New Jersey.
f. I am frightened because thunder is scary.

Exercise 2.2: Identifying grammatical categories B

Using the properties of English grammatical categories as described in this chapter, identify the
grammatical category of each of the bolded words below. For each one, describe the distributional
properties (syntactic or morphological) that lead to that conclusion.
Don’t just consider the sentences offered here: investigate these words used in similar
functions in other kinds of sentences also.

(1) I plan to order myself some french fries.

(2) I just need to put on my shoes before leaving.

(3) Nonetheless, I still left on time.

Exercise 2.3: Identifying grammatical categories C

It is possible for words that are not the same category to carry similar meanings. In Mainstream
U.S. English, the words a my, particular, and that all carry a meaning something like ‘a specific
one’ in the sentences in (1). This is not the entirety of the meaning of each, but each of them do
carry a notion of specificity and each sentence in (1) could be used to describe the same situa-
tion.

(1) a. I met a friend.

b. I met my friend.
c. I met a particular friend.
d. I met that friend.
Chapter 2: Grammatical categories 80

Using distributional evidence from syntax and/or morphology, argue for a, my, particular, and
that in English are the same grammatical categories or different grammatical categories.

Exercise 2.4: Count nouns and mass nouns

Is mail a count noun or a mass noun? And how about email? Ask a couple of friends: do your
intuitions match, especially about email?

Exercise 2.5: English adverbial modifiers

What is the grammatical category of English adverbial modifiers yesterday and tomorrow? Pro-
vide evidence to make an arguments for your conclusion based.

Problem 2.1: Grammatical categories of nonce words

As we mentioned in this chapter, children’s stories and poetry are often excellent instances of
nonce words (nonsense words) being used creatively for expressive effect. Lewis Carroll’s poem
“Jabberwocky” is another such instance, and gives an opportunity to explore our intuitions
about these invented words.

Jabberwocky, by Lewis Carroll

’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!

The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!”

He took his vorpal sword in hand;

Long time the manxome foe he sought—
So rested he by the Tumtum tree
And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,

The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through

The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
Chapter 2: Grammatical categories 81

He left it dead, and with its head

He went galumphing back.

“And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?

Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”
He chortled in his joy.

’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe. (Through the Looking Glass, Lewis Carroll, 1871)

Your task in this exercise is to identify the grammatical categories of each of the words
bolded in the poem. For list items with phrases containing multiple words, identify the syntactic
category for each. For each word, explain the diagnostic evidence that supports your conclusion.
This will include evidence from both morphological and syntactic distribution, but can also in-
clude additional intuitions that you have, just be as specific as possible about where you think
the intuition comes from.
There are no specifically correct answers here, in the sense that these words are clearly
made up. But for some of them, native English speakers will have very clear judgments about
what syntactic category they must be (which arise from specific properties of their distribution).
For other words here, there may be multiple different (“right”) answers, in the sense that there
are multiple parses/structures of the sentence that are possible. The point is not to get a right
answer, but to build a strong argument, based on specific evidence.

Problem 2.2: Grammatical categories of quantifiers

From a semantic perspective, both all and every can be described as quantifers, because they
quantify over (that is, count) a group of entities. In fact, they are both universal quantifiers: they
both capture the idea the each relevant individual is included in a statement. The two sentences
in (1) are roughly synonymous, meaning that the entire group of relevant children left.

(1) a. Every child left.

b. All the children left.

The question: do all and every in Mainstream U.S. English fall into the same grammatical
category? What is the grammatical category of each of them? Consider the following evidence
in drawing your conclusion, along with the examples in (1):

(2) a. * Every the child left.

b. * The every child left.
c. * All child left.
d. ? All children left.
Chapter 2: Grammatical categories 82

e. * Every children left.

f. ✔ All these children left.
g. * Every this child left.
h. * This every child left.

Problem 2.3: Adjective and verb modifiers in English

In elementary school in the U.S., students are taught that words like very, rather, quite, and re-
ally are adverbs, and are taught that adverbs can modify either verbs or adjectives. One of the
motivations for this is that many of them end in -ly (as is typical for English adverbs).

(1) a. I am rather happy.

b. The children are extremely content.

When used in this way, they tend to intensify the interpretation of the word they modify.

(2) Additional words from this category:

• absolutely • particularly • totally • too

• completely • really • utterly
• exceptionally • quite • quite

Are these words adverbs or some other grammatical category? Provide a rationale for your
response using empirical evidence to make your case. This will require native English intuitions,
so rely on your own judgments or ask a native speaker of English for their judgments.

Problem 2.4: Grammatical category of the English possessive morpheme

Background
Possessive constructions are complex, as they allow for a noun phrase (the possessor) embed-
ded inside another noun phrase that refers to the possessed element (the possessee). In (1) the
possessor is Lilly and the possessee is ball.

(1) Lilly’s ball

English allows for quite complex possessors to occur in possessive noun phrases. So instead
of Lilly the possessor can be noun phrases of almost any size.

(2) a. [The dog]’s ball.

b. [The aging dog]’s ball.
c. [The dog that is always sleeping]’s ball

We can see a pattern, namely,

(3) [possessoR] ’s possessee

Chapter 2: Grammatical categories 83

The puzzle
What is the grammatical category of the English possessive morpheme ’s? One plausible answer
is that it forms its own category. But the data below suggest a different answer. In each possessive
construction, the possessor is in brackets the same way as above.

(4) a. the ball

b. the big ball
c. this ball
d. [Lilly]’s ball
e. * the [Lilly]’s ball
f. * this [Lilly]’s ball
g. * [Lilly]’s the ball
h. * [the dog]’s the ball
i. * [the dog]’s this ball
j. * the [the dog]’s ball
k. * this [the dog]’s ball

Use the data given above to answer the following questions.

A. The data in (4) show a complementary distribution pattern. What is it?
B. What grammatical category is the English possessive behaving like?

Problem 2.5: Tiriki grammatical categories

Tiriki is a Bantu language of the Luyia subgroup that is spoken in Western Kenya.
A. In the example below, outline what the morphosyntactic properties of nouns, adjectives,
and verbs are.
B. In English, happy and sad are adjectives. What grammatical category are they in Tiriki?
Background: Cardinal numbers in glosses for Bantu languages (like Tiriki) signify noun class,
which is arbitrarily organized by numbers by linguists. Noun class is like grammatical gender
(masculine, feminine) in Romance languages like Spanish and Italian, but it is not linked with
human sex/gender.
Glosses: agR = agreement; cardinal numbers (1, 2, 3…) = noun class; pst = past tense; fut =
future tense; some glossing is simplified for the purposes of this exercise.

(1) Mw-ana mu-hulili a-a-rhula. (3) Mw-ana mu-hindila na-a-rhule.

1-child 1agR-polite 1sm-pst-leave 1-child 1agR-big fut-1agR-leave
‘A polite child left.’ ‘A big child will leave.’

(2) Va-na va-hulili va-a-rhula. (4) Va-na va-tunyi va-a-rhula.

2-child 2agR-polite 2agR-pst-leave 2-child 2agR-sad 2agR-pst-leave
‘Polite children left.’ ‘Sad children left.’
Chapter 2: Grammatical categories 84

(5) Va-na va-sangali na-va-rhule. ‘An old car broke.’

2-child 2agR-happy fut-2agR-leave
(14) Mu-toka mu-hya kw-onekha.
‘Happy children will leave.’
3-car 3agR-new 3agR-pst.break
(6) Va-na va-sangali va-a-rhula. ‘A new mutoka (car) broke.’
2-child 2agR-happy 2agR-pst-leave
‘Happy children left.’ (15) Mi-toka mi-khulu ch-onekha.
4-car 4agR-old 4agR-pst.break
(7) Mw-ana mu-sangali na-a-rhule.
‘Old cars broke.’
1-child 1agR-happy fut-1agR-leave
‘A happy child will leave.’ (16) Mi-toka mi-hya ch-onekha.
(8) Mw-ana mu-tunyi na-a-rhule. 3-car 3agR-new 3agR-pst.break
1-child 1agR-sad fut-1agR-leave ‘New cars broke.’
‘A sad child will leave.’ (17) Mw-ana mu-ti a-sangali.
(9) Mu-linga mu-kali kw-a-kwaa. 1-child 1agR-small 1agR-happy
3-beehive 3agR-big 3agR-pst-fall ‘A small child is happy.’
‘A big beehive fell.’ (18) Mw-ana mu-kali na-a-sangale.
(10) Mu-linga mu-tii na-ku-kwii. 1-child 1agR-big fut-1agR-happy
3-beehive 3agR-small fut-3agR-fall ‘A big child will be happy.’
‘A small beehive will fall.
(19) Va-na va-kali va-tunyi.
(11) Mi-linga mi-ti ch-a-kwaa. 2-child 2agR-big 2agR-sad
4-beehive 4agR-small 4agR-pst-fall ‘Big children are sad.’
‘Small beehives fell.
(20) Va-na va-ti va-tunyi.
(12) Mi-linga mi-kali na-chi-kwi.
2-child 2agR-small 2agR-sad
4-beehive 4agR-big fut-4agR-fall
‘Small children are sad.’
‘Big beehives will fall.’
(13) Mu-toka mu-khulu kw-onekha.
3-car 3agR-old 3agR-pst.break

(21) Tsi-ng’ombe tsi-ngali tsy-a-ng’wa ma-tsi.

10-cow 10agR-big 10agR-pst-drink 6-water
‘Big cows drank water.’
(22) Tsi-ng’ombe tsi-ndi na-tsi-ng’wi ma-tsi.
10-cow 10agR-small fut-10agR-drink 6-water
‘Small cows will drink water.’
(23) I-ng’ombe i-ndi y-a-ng’wa ma-tsi.
9-cow 9agR-small 9agR-pst-drink 6-water
‘A small cow drank water.’
(24) I-ng’ombe i-ngali n-i-ng’wi ma-tsi.
9-cow 9agR-small fut-9agR-drink 6-water
‘A big cow will drink water.’
Chapter 2: Grammatical categories 85

Problem 2.6: Grammatical category of English pronouns

English pronouns in some ways behave as a category of their own, as we can readily describe
them and organize them in a chart like (1), repeated from Table 2.4 of the chapter.

(1)
Person Number Subject forms Non-subject forms
1 I me
2 sg you you
3 he, she, they, it him, her, them, it
1 we us
2 pl you you
3 they them

But we have a sense that pronouns stand in for some category in a sentence. What is the gram-
matical category of pronouns? Put another way, what kinds of elements can pronouns replace
in a sentence? In the data examples below, we include various attempts to replace content with
a pronoun.

(2) The enthusiastic child ran down the hill.

a. * The enthusiastic she ran down the hill.
b. * The she ran down the hill.
c. ✔ She ran down the hill.

(3) Three yellow cars drove out of the parking lot.

a. * Three yellow they drove out of the parking lot.
b. * Three they drove out of the parking lot.
c. ✔ They drove out of the parking lot.

Based on the data, answer the following questions.

A. Are pronouns nouns?
B. If not, what category do pronouns behave as?

Problem 2.7: English main verb be

In Mainstream U.S. English, main verb be poses some interesting puzzles. The task here is to
articulate what the pattern is that is a puzzle, something to be solved by a syntactican. So you
will identify a pattern, but won’t have a full solution yet (that requires more syntax).
Chapter 2: Grammatical categories 86

Background
Auxiliary be and main verb be inflect in the same way:

(1) Main verb be inflection:

a. ✔ They are happy.
b. ✔ She is happy.

(2) Auxiliary be inflection:

a. ✔ They are learning Spanish. They are invited to the ceremony. (non-third person)
b. ✔ He is learning Spanish. He is invited to the ceremony. (third person)

Other main verbs do bear inflection, though they are not all irregular in the same way that be
is.

(3) Main verb run inflection:

a. ✔ They run every day.
b. ✔ She run-s every day.

The puzzle
The question you are investigating: syntactically-speaking, does main verb be behave like an aux-
iliary or a main verb? How do you know? Be specific. The judgments here are given for Main-
stream U.S. English (MUSE)—some judgments may differ for different varieties of English.

(4) Main verb be:

a. ✔ They must be happy.
b. ✔ They claim to be happy.
c. ✔ They don’t regret being syntacticians.

(5) Auxiliary be:

a. ✔ They must be learning Spanish.
b. ✔ They claim to be learning Spanish.
c. ✔ They don’t regret being invited to the ceremony.

(6) Main verb run:

a. ✔ They must run every day.
b. ✔ They claim to run every day.
c. ✔ They don’t regret running ever day.

(7) Main verb be:

a. * She DOES be happy.
b. * She doesn’t be happy.
c. * Does she be happy?
Chapter 2: Grammatical categories 87

(8) Main verb be:

a. ✔ She IS happy.
b. ✔ She isn’t happy.
c. ✔ Is she happy?

(9) Auxiliary verb be:

a. ✔ He IS learning Spanish.
b. ✔ He isn’t learning Spanish.
c. ✔ Is he learning Spanish?

(10) Auxiliary verb be:

a. * He DOES be learning Spanish. They DO be invited to the ceremony.
b. * He doesn’t be learning Spanish. They aren’t be invited to the ceremony.
c. * Does he be learning Spanish? Do they be invited to the ceremony?

(11) Main verb run:

a. ✔ They DO run every day.
b. ✔ They don’t run every day.
c. ✔ Do they run every day?

Problem 2.8: Grammatical categories in Korean

Use the following sentences to practice identifying grammatical categories in Korean. For parts
(A)–(B) assume distributional criteria for identifying grammatical categories in Korean are largely
similar (but perhaps not identical) to those in English.
A. Which items are nouns? How can you tell?
B. Which items are verbs? How can you tell?
C. What are some ways in which distributional criteria for Korean differ from those for Eng-
lish?
D. Are there any words here that are ambiguous or difficult to assign to a category?

Background Info

In the following glosses, nom indicates the subject of a sentence and acc indicates the
object of a sentence. decl indicates a sentence is just a statement, while q indicates a
sentence is a question. adn is short for ‘adnominal’, and indicates a special morphological
form used to modify nouns. nfut means ‘non-future tense’ (that is, present or past tense).
ci is a suffix you can safely ignore for this exercise.

(1) Minci-ka ta-n ttalki-lul cohaha-nta.

Minji-nom sweet-adn.nfut strawberry-acc like-decl
‘Minji likes sweet food.’
Chapter 2: Grammatical categories 88

(2) Cohaha-nun salam-i cikum yeki iss-ni?

like-adn.pRs person-nom now here exist-q
‘Is the person you like here right now?’
(3) I ttalki-ka acwu tal-ass-ta.
this strawberry-nom very sweet-pst-decl
‘This strawberry was very sweet.’
(4) Salam-tul-i pothong ttalki-lul silheha-ci anh-nunta.
person-pl-nom usually strawberry-acc dislike-ci neg-decl
‘People usually don’t dislike strawberries.’
(5) Ku eli-n ai-ka wul-ess-ta.
that young-adn.nfut child-nom cry-pst-decl
‘That young child cried.’
(6) Wul-ci anh-nun ai-man hakkyo-ey ka-nta.
cry-ci neg-adn.pRs child-only school-to go-decl
‘Only kids who don’t cry go to school.’

Problem 2.9: Variation in English categories

What is the syntactic difference between mainstream U.S. English them and the variant illustrated
in (1), which is a part of many varieties of English?

(1) This is definitely one of them jobs, man, if you’re one of them worriers…
(Overheard on the southwest corner of 34th Street and Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA,
31 August 1999)

Appendix: Finiteness in English 2.9

Take Note

A number of points in the constituency discussion in the next chapter run into questions
about how finite verbs pattern differently from nonfinite verbs in English. This appendix
details finiteness in English in additional detail.
Chapter 2: Grammatical categories 89

2.9.1 Verb forms

English verbs can take the various forms listed in Table 2.8.

Name Description Examples

bare Default form in present tense They play together.
sentences. I see.
Also appears in various nonfinite I want to play.
contexts, such as in to infinitive They need to see you.
clauses,
after modals, They may play.
We will see.
and in connection with do support. They don’t play lacrosse.
Do you see?
-s Special form used in the present Lukas runs for miles.
tense to mark agreement with a third The cat enjoys treats.
person singular subject.
-ing As present participle, combines The cat is playing with the yarn.
with auxiliary be to express various I was seeing her until a week ago.
aspectual nuances.
Also occurs on its own as the Playing with landmines is dangerous.
gerund. We always enjoy seeing you.
past tense The morphologically simplest way of The cat played with the yarn.
expressing past tense. We saw a deer.
past participle Combines with auxiliary be to form Baseball is played all over the world.
passive forms. She was last seen off Mozambique.
Combines with auxiliary have to They have never played lacrosse.
form perfect forms. I had never seen it before.

Table 2.8: Verb forms in English

▶ For all verbs, the -ing form is predictable from the bare form, being derived from it by the
affixation of -ing (play-ing, see-ing, hav-ing, be-ing).
▶ The -s form is similarly predictable for most verbs, with major (be, is) or minor (have, has)
exceptions.
▶ The past tense and past participle forms are predictable from the bare form in some cases, but
not in others. With regular verbs, the past tense and past participle forms are homonymous
and are formed by affixing -ed to the bare form. Why bother distinguishing between the
two forms? That is, why not just posit a single past form? The reason is that the past tense
and the past participle are distinct for irregular verbs such as go (went, gone), see (saw, seen),
sing (sang, sung), or write (wrote, written).
Chapter 2: Grammatical categories 90

▶ The past tense form is sometimes called the -ed form (read “ee dee form”) because -ed is the
default expression of the past tense morpheme.
▶ The past participle form is sometimes called the -en form (read “ee enn form”) because -en
is a common expression of the past participle morpheme (though not the default expression,
which, as just mentioned, is homonymous with the default past tense morpheme).
▶ A verb’s bare form, past tense, and past participle (in other words, exactly the forms that
aren’t generally predictable) are known as its principal parts. (2) shows some examples.

(2) a. play, played, played

b. come, came, come
c. stand, stood, stood

2.9.2 Finiteness
Finiteness of verbs
The verb forms just discussed are classified into two categories: finite and nonfinite. Finite
verbs can function on their own as the core of an independent sentence, whereas nonfinite verbs
cannot. Rather, nonfinite verbs must ordinarily combine with a modal, an auxiliary verb, or the
infinitival particle to.
A verb’s -s form and past tense form are always finite, and the two participles (the -ing and
-en forms) are always nonfinite.

(3) Finite verb:

a. ✔ He gives a performance every week.
b. ✔ He gave a performance every week.
(4) Nonfinite verb:
a. ✔ She is giving a performance here tonight.
b. ✔ She has given a performance here in the past.

To complicate matters a bit, a verb’s bare form can be either finite or nonfinite. Bare forms
that occur on their own are finite and express present tense. Otherwise, bare forms are nonfinite.
Examples are given in (5) and (6).

(5) Finite verb:

a. ✔ We give performances all the time.
(6) Nonfinite verb:
a. ✔ We will give a performance tomorrow.
b. ✔ We promised to give a performance soon.

Table 2.9 summarizes the above discussion.

Chapter 2: Grammatical categories 91

Example Verb form Finite?

play-s, see-s 3sg present tense
play-ed, saw past tense yes
bare (present tense)
play, see
bare (otherwise)
play-ing, see-ing -ing no
play-ed, see-n past participle

Table 2.9: Verb forms and finiteness in English

Finiteness of clauses
Finiteness is a property not only of verbs, but also of clauses. Ordinary clauses—ones that can
stand alone as an utterance—are finite. All finite clauses contain exactly one finite element per
clause. In the simplest case, this finite element is a finite verb, as illustrated in (7).

(7) They helped us. (finite clause, finite main verb)

It is also possible for a finite clause’s finite element to be a finite auxiliary verb or a modal
(finite by definition). In this case, illustrated in (8), the entire clause is then finite, the auxiliary
verb or modal is finite, but the main verb is nonfinite.

(8) They did help us. (finite clause, finite auxiliary verb, nonfinite main verb.)

Clauses can also be nonfinite. The verb of a nonfinite clause is always nonfinite. (9) il-
lustrates the case that is easiest to recognize—the case where the nonfinite clause (enclosed in
square brackets) contains the particle to.

(9) They agreed [ to help us ]. (nonfinite clause, nonfinite main verb.)

You might be wondering why we classify the subordinate-clause verb in (9)—help—as non-
finite. After all, help is a bare verb form, and so in principle might be finite (recall Table 2.9). The
reason is that the verb neither expresses present tense nor agrees with a third-person singular
subject. We can see this clearly by changing the past tense verb of the main clause to present tense
and the main-clause subject to third-person singular. As shown in (10), help does not change to
help-s, as we would expect if it were finite.

(10) He always agrees [ to { help, *help-s } us ].

The same reasoning extends to cases where the nonfinite clause has a subject of its own.
The examples in (11) and (12) show that neither a subordinate-clause nor a main-clause third-
person subject causes the bare verb to change form.

(11) a. We expect [ her to { help, *help-s } us ].

b. She expects [ him to { help, *help-s } us ].
Chapter 2: Grammatical categories 92

(12) a. We make [ her { help, *help-s } us ].

b. She makes [ him { help, *help-s } us ].

We conclude from this that the bare forms are nonfinite, as are the clauses containing
them.
Table 2.10 summarizes the above discussion. The relevant clauses are uniformly delimited
by square brackets. In the general case, the yes/no values agree across columns; it is only the
second row that contains a mismatch.

Example Is the clause Does the clause Is the main verb

finite? contain a finite finite?
element?
[ They helped us ] . yes yes yes
[ They did help us ] . yes yes no
He always agrees [ to help us ] . no no no
She expects [ him to help us ] . no no no
He makes [ her help us ] . no no no

Table 2.10: Clauses and finiteness in English

 3
Constituency and
hierarchical structure

Chapter outline
3.1 Tests for determining syntactic constituenthood . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
3.1.1 Substitution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
3.1.2 Movement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
3.1.3 Questions and short answers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
3.1.4 It-clefts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
3.2 Some complications for constituency diagnostics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
3.2.1 Mismatches between syntactic structure and other structure . . . . . . . 98
3.2.2 False negative results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
3.2.3 Relevant diagnostics, to be used with caution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
3.3 Representing syntactic constituenthood . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
3.3.1 A case study: The existence of verb phrases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
3.3.2 Trees versus brackets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
3.3.3 Basic terms and relations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
3.3.4 Derived terms and relations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
3.4 Regarding scientific models . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116
3.5 Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118
3.6 Exercises and problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120

In Chapter 1, we provided evidence for the idea that sentences aren’t just strings of words,
but that they consist of syntactic constituents—groups of words that belong together. In many
cases, native speakers have clear intuitions about whether a particular string is a constituent.
But not all cases are clear, and it is useful to have diagnostic tests at our disposal for determining
constituenthood in such cases. It also sometimes happens that native speakers disagree over
whether a string is a constituent. In such cases, the tests can help us to clearly establish that fact
so that we have a firm basis for further exploring the differences between the alternative mental
grammars. The chapter is organized as follows. We first present the constituenthood tests and
some complications in applying them in connection with certain syntactic categories. Finally, we
introduce the graphic representation of constituenthood by means of syntactic trees.
Chapter 3: Constituency and hierarchical structure 94

Tests for determining syntactic constituenthood 3.1

At first glance, a sentence consists of a string of words arranged in a single dimension—that
of linear order. However, we presented evidence in Chapter 1 for a second dimension that is
less obvious (though no less real!) than linear order—the dimension of syntactic structure.
Whether a particular string of words is a syntactic constituent isn’t always self-evident, and so
several tests have been developed as diagnostics for constituenthood. In this chapter, we review
these tests, along with some of the complications that arise in applying them. We also discuss
in more detail how syntactic structure is represented in tree diagrams of the sort introduced in
§ 1.5.1 of Chapter 1.

3.1.1 Substitution
The most basic test for syntactic constituenthood is the substitution test. The reasoning behind
the test is simple. A constituent is any syntactic unit, regardless of length or syntactic category. A
single word is the smallest free-standing constituent belonging to a particular syntactic category.
So if a single word can substitute for a string of several words, that’s evidence that the string is
a constituent.
We mentioned in Chapter 1, § 1.3.1 that pronouns can substitute for noun phrases. Some
examples are given in (1).

(1) a. The little boy fed the cat. → ✔ He fed her.

b. Black cats detest green peas. → ✔ They detest them.

As already mentioned in Chapter 1, it’s important to understand that a particular string

of words can be a noun phrase in one syntactic context, but not in another. For instance, the
substitution test tells us that the underlined strings are noun phrases in (1), but not in (2).

(2) a. The little boy from next door fed the cat without a tail.
↓ ↓
* He from next door fed her without a tail.

b. These black cats detest those green peas.

↓ ↓
* These they detest those them.

Rather, in these sentences, the noun phrases are the longer underlined strings in (3).

(3) a. The little boy from next door fed the cat without a tail. → ✔ He fed her.
b. These black cats detest those green peas. → ✔ They detest them.

Pronouns are not the only placeholder elements, or pro-forms. For instance, the adverbs
Chapter 3: Constituency and hierarchical structure 95

here or there can substitute for constituents that refer to locations or directions. As in the case of
noun phrases, whether a particular string is a constituent depends on its syntactic context.1

(4) a. Put it on the table. → ✔ Put it there.

b. Put it over on the table. → ✔ Put it over there.
c. Put it over on the table. → ✔ Put it there.

(5) a. Put it on the table that’s already set. → * Put it there that’s already set.
b. Put it over on the table that’s already set. → * Put it over there that’s already set.
c. Put it over on the table that’s already set. → * Put it there that’s already set.

The word so can substitute for adjective phrases (here, the most natural-sounding results
are obtained in contexts of comparison or contrast). As usual, the same string sometimes is
a constituent and sometimes isn’t. (The judgments in (6) are ours; for some speakers, (6c) is
grammatical.)

(6) a. ✔ I am very happy, and Linda is so, too.

b. ✔ I am very fond of Lukas, and Linda is so, too.
c. * I am very fond of my nephew, and Linda is so of her niece.

Finally, pronouns and sometimes the word so can substitute for subordinate clauses intro-
duced by that, as in (7) and (8).

(7) a. I { know, suspect } that they’re invited.

b. ✔ I { know, suspect } it.
(8) a. I { imagine, think } that they’re invited.
b. ✔ I { imagine, think } so.

We conclude our discussion of substitution by noting a complicating factor. It is not the case
that every constituent has a corresponding pro-form. For instance, although some prepositional
phrases can be replaced by the pro-forms here or there, others—for instance, ones referring to
purposes or reasons—can’t. As a result, it is perfectly possible for the substitution test to give false
negative results, and for the results of the substitution to disagree with the results of the other
tests presented in what follows. We return to the issue of false negatives later on in § 3.2.2.
Chapter 3: Constituency and hierarchical structure 96

3.1.2 Movement
Substitution by pro-forms is not the only diagnostic for whether a string is a constituent. If it
is possible to move a particular string from its ordinary position to another position—typically,
at least in English, to the beginning of the sentence—that, too, is evidence that the string is a
constituent (because the string is behaving together as a unit). In order to make the result of
movement completely acceptable, especially in the case of noun phrases, it’s sometimes necessary
to use a special intonation or to invoke a special discourse context. In the examples that follow,
empty underlining (“ ”) indicates the ordinary position that a constituent has moved from, and
appropriate discourse material (enclosed in parentheses) may be added to make the examples
sound natural.

(9) a. I fed the cats.

b. ✔ The cats, I fed . (The dogs, I didn’t.)

(10) a. I fed the cats with long, fluffy tails.

b. ✔ The cats with long, fluffy tails, I fed . (The other cats, I didn’t.)

Movement of constituents other than noun phrases is illustrated in (11)–(13).

(11) Adjective phrase emphasis movement:

a. Ali Baba returned from his travels wiser than before.
b. ✔ Wiser than before, Ali Baba returned from his travels .

(12) Adverb phrase emphasis movement:

a. They arrived at the concert hall more quickly than they had expected.
b. ✔ More quickly than they had expected, they arrived at the concert hall .

(13) Prepositional phrase emphasis movement:

a. The cat strolled across the porch with a confident air.
b. ✔ With a confident air, the cat strolled across the porch .
Chapter 3: Constituency and hierarchical structure 97

3.1.3 Questions and short answers

Another diagnostic for constituenthood is whether the string can function as a short answer to a
question. The question itself also functions as a diagnostic test, since we can think of it as being
derived by substituting a question word for a string and subsequently moving the question word
to the beginning of the sentence.2 (14)–(18) illustrate this pair of tests for a variety of constituent
types.

Noun phrase: Adjective phrase:

(14) What do you see? (15) How did the traveler return?
a. The cats. a. Wiser than before.
b. Cats with long, fluffy tails. b. Fairly jet-lagged.
c. The cats with long, fluffy tails.

Adverb phrase: Prepositional phrase:

(16) How did they do? (17) How did the cat stroll across the porch?
a. Not badly. a. With a confident air.
b. Surprisingly well. b. quickly.
c. Much better than they had (18) Where did Ali Baba go?
expected. a. On a long journey.
b. To New York.

Notice, incidentally, that so substitution, discussed earlier, has a variant that is reminiscent
of questions. In addition to just substituting for the string of interest, so can subsequently move
to the beginning of the sentence, triggering subject-aux inversion—the same process that turns
declarative sentences into yes-no questions. This variant of so substitution is illustrated in (19)
and (20). (The judgment for (19c) varies across speakers in the same way as the one for (6c).)

(19) a. ✔ I am very happy, and so is Linda.

b. ✔ I am very fond of Lukas, and so is Linda.
c. * I am very fond of my nephew, and so is Linda of her niece.

(20) ✔ I { imagine, think } that they’re invited, and so do they.

Chapter 3: Constituency and hierarchical structure 98

3.1.4 It-clefts
The final constituent test that we’ll consider is based on a special sentence type known as it-
clefts. We begin by noting that ordinary sentences can often be divided into two parts: a part
that contains background information that is presupposed, the ground, and a part that is intended
to be particularly informative, the focus. In spoken language, this focus-ground partition (also
known as its information structure) is often conveyed by intonation alone in English.3 But
English can also express the focus/ground distinction via a syntactic frame consisting of it, a
form of the copula to be, and the subordinating conjunction that. In the examples in (21)–(22),
the frame is in standard font, the ground is in italics, and the focus is in bold. Notice that a single
sentence can be partitioned into focus and ground in more than one way, giving rise to more than
one it-cleft.

(21) a. Ordinary cats detest the smell of citrus fruits.

b. ✔ It is ordinary cats that detest the smell of citrus fruits.
(22) a. Ordinary cats detest the smell of citrus fruits.
b. ✔ It is the smell of citrus fruits that ordinary cats detest.

If a string can appear as the focus of an it-cleft, then it is a constituent. Some examples for
various constituent types other than noun phrase are given in (23)–(25).

(23) Adjective phrase it-cleft:

a. Ali Baba returned from his travels wiser than before.
b. ✔ It was wiser than before that Ali Baba returned from his travels .

(24) Adverb phrase it-cleft:

a. They arrived at the concert hall more quickly than expected.
b. ✔ It was more quickly than expected that they arrived at the concert hall .

(25) Prepositional phrase it-cleft:

a. The cat strolled across the porch with a confident air.
b. ✔ It was with a confident air that the cat strolled across the porch .

Some complications for constituency diagnostics 3.2

3.2.1 Mismatches between syntactic structure and other structure

We mentioned earlier that it is not always self-evident whether a particular sequence of words is
a syntactic constituent. For instance, in reading a sentence like (26) out loud, we can perceive an
intonation break between cat and that (indicated by the slash).
Chapter 3: Constituency and hierarchical structure 99

(26) This is the cat / that chased the rat.

Because the intonation break is clearly audible, it is very tempting to equate the sentence’s ab-
stract syntactic structure with its relatively concrete prosodic structure. Specifically, because the
and cat belong to the same prosodic constituent, it is tempting to treat the cat as a syntactic
constituent.
There are two pieces of evidence against doing so. First, as we have already seen in similar
examples, substituting a pronoun for the string the cat is ungrammatical in the context of (26)
(though not in other contexts).

(27) a. This is the cat that chased the rat.

b. * This is it that chased the rat.
(28) a. I petted the cat.
b. ✔ I petted it.

Second, the string cat that chased the rat is shown to be a constituent by the grammaticality
of substituting the pro-form one (one substitution is discussed in more detail in section 6.1.4 of
Chapter 6).

(29) a. This is the cat that chased the rat.

b. ✔ This is the one.

The facts in (27) and (29) converge to tell us that the word cat first combines with the relative
clause, not with the. Thus, (26) exhibits a mismatch between two types of linguistic structure:
syntactic and prosodic.
It is worth noting that the syntactic structure just described corresponds to the way that
the interpretation of the entire expression the cat that chased the rat is composed from the in-
terpretation of smaller expressions. In a simple semantics, the term cat denotes the set of all
cats. Combining cat with the relative clause yields cat that chased the rat, which denotes a sub-
set of all cats—namely, those with the property of having chased the rat. Further combining cat
that chased the rat with the definite article the yields as a denotation some unique individual
within the rat-chasing subset of cats (exactly which individual this is depends on the discourse
context).4
This correspondence of syntactic structure and semantic structure (the step-by-step compo-
sition of the expression’s meaning, as just illustrated for (26)) holds up as a first approximation,
and it is consistent with the correspondence between noun phrases and individuals, between
adjective phrases and properties, between prepositional phrases and locations, directions, etc.,
between verb phrases and events, states, etc., and so on. Nevertheless, mismatches between syn-
tactic structure and semantic structure are possible. For instance, the sentence in (30) has two
distinct meanings, which can be paraphrased as in (31).

(30) Every student knows two languages.

Chapter 3: Constituency and hierarchical structure 100

(31) a. For every student, it is the case that they know two languages.
(Langston knows Arabic and Basque, Maisha knows Chinese and Danish, Lucca
knows English and French, …)
b. There are two languages that every student knows.
(Arabic and Basque are known by Langston, Maisha, Lucca, …)

In the interpretation in (31a), the universal quantifier every is said to take scope over the
number two (EVERY > TWO). In the interpretation in (31b), the number takes scope over the
universal quantifier (TWO > EVERY). In either case, though, the ambiguous sentence itself (not
the paraphrases!) has a single syntactic structure. This is evident from the syntactic constituent-
hood tests in (32)–(33), where the question and short answer pair are compatible with either scope
interpretation.

(32) a. Every student knows two languages.

b. Who knows two languages? Every student.
(33) a. Every student knows two languages.
b. What does every student know? Two languages.

Other mismatches are also possible. Recall from the section on it-clefts that one and the
same sentence can be associated with more than one information structure. Finally, mismatches
between syntactic and morphological structure are common (we discuss two important cases in
Chapters 12 and 13).

3.2.2 False negative results

In a perfect world for syntacticians, the relation between a string being a constituent and it pass-
ing the constituenthood tests would be biconditional, as indicated in the “Dream world” column
in Table 3.1. The world, however, is not made to order for syntacticians, and it turns out to be
possible for constituents to fail one or more constituenthood tests. The actual state of affairs is
thus as indicated in the “Real world” column of Table 3.1.5

If a string… then it… Dream world Real world

passes the constituency tests, is a constituent. TRUE TRUE
is a constituent, passes the constituency tests. TRUE sometimes FALSE

Table 3.1: False negatives in constituency tests

In other words, the failure of a string to pass a constituenthood test can be a false negative
result. In what follows, we present three such cases—constituents that fail at least some of the
constituenthood tests
• because they are individual syntactic heads rather than phrases,
• because they contain inflected verbs, or
• because they are contained within so-called syntactic islands.
Chapter 3: Constituency and hierarchical structure 101

• because the diagnostic as constructed is pragmatically infelicitous.

The unifying issue is that the grammatical constructions that we use to diagnose constituency
are not magical tests: they are themselves grammatical constructions within the grammatical
system, subject to constraints that are perhaps independent of the constituency question. The
end of this section discusses this in more depth.

Phrasal versus lexical constituents

Since single lexical items are minimal (often indivisible) units, they are constituents by definition.6
Nevertheless, they don’t necessarily behave on a par with multiword constituents. For instance,
cats passes the constituenthood tests reviewed earlier in (34), but not in (35).

(34) Cats are not social animals. → They are not social animals.

(35) a. The cats are hungry. → * The they are hungry.

b. Tabby cats are quite common. → * Tabby they are quite common.
c. Cats without tails are relatively rare. → * They without tails are relatively rare.

The reason for the grammaticality contrast in (34) and (35) is a systematic difference be-
tween the syntactic contexts in these examples. In (35), the word cats is accompanied by a deter-
miner or a modifier of some sort, indicated by italics. In such contexts, cats combines with these
other words to form a noun phrase, but it isn’t a noun phrase in its own right. By contrast, cats
in (34) is a bare, or unmodified, noun. As such, it functions as a noun and as a noun phrase at the
same time. In other words, there are two levels of constituenthood: the lexical level, where single
words are constituents by definition, and the phrasal level, where single words don’t necessarily
behave on a par with multiword constituents.
The constituenthood tests reviewed earlier turn out to be diagnostic only for phrasal con-
stituents. Moving, questioning, and it-clefting lexical constituents, rather than phrasal ones,
yields ungrammatical results, as illustrated in (36)–(47). As before, the relevant lexical con-
stituent is underlined, and any material belonging with it to the same phrasal constituent is in
italics.

No emphasis movement of individual heads:

(36) a. I fed the cats.

b. * Cats, I fed the .

(37) a. Ali Baba returned from his travels wiser than before.
b. * Wiser, Ali Baba returned from his travels than before.

(38) a. They arrived at the concert hall more quickly than they had expected.
b. * Quickly, they arrived at the concert hall more than they had expected.

(39) a. The cat strolled across the porch with a confident air.
b. * With, the cat strolled across the porch a confident air.
Chapter 3: Constituency and hierarchical structure 102

No questions and answers with individual heads:

(40) a. * What did you see the ?

b. * Cats.

(41) a. * How did Ali Baba return from his travels than before?.
b. * Wiser.

(42) a. * How did they arrive at the concert hall more than they expected?
b. * Quickly.

(43) a. * How did the cat stroll across the porch a confident air?
b. * With.

No it-clefts focusing individual heads:

(44) a. Ordinary cats detest the smell of citrus fruits.

b. * It is smell that ordinary cats detest the of citrus fruits.

(45) a. Ali Baba returned from his travels wiser than before.
b. * It was wiser that Ali Baba returned from his travels than before.

(46) a. They arrived at the concert hall more quickly than they had expected.
b. * It was quickly that they arrived at the concert hall more than they had expected.

(47) a. The cat strolled across the porch with a confident air.
b. * It was with that the cat strolled across the porch a confident air.

By contrast, the examples in (48)–(56) illustrate the grammatical results of moving, ques-
tioning, and it-clefting phrasal constituents that happen to consist of a single word (notice the
absence of italicized material in this case). Examples for prepositional phrases are missing because
prepositions, at least the ones in the examples that we have been using, require an object.

Emphasis movement of a single word that makes up an entire phrase:

(48) a. I like cats.

b. ✔ Cats, I like .

(49) a. Ali Baba returned from his travels wiser.

b. ✔ Wiser, Ali Baba returned from his travels .

(50) a. They arrived at the concert hall quickly.

b. ✔ Quickly, they arrived at the concert hall .
Chapter 3: Constituency and hierarchical structure 103

Questions and answers with a single word that makes up an entire phrase:

(51) a. ✔ What do you like ?

b. ✔ Cats.

(52) a. ✔ How did Ali Baba return from his travels ?.

b. ✔ Wiser.

(53) a. ✔ How did they arrive at the concert hall ?

b. ✔ Quickly.

It-clefts focusing a single word that makes up an entire phrase:

(54) a. Ordinary cats detest citrus.

b. ✔ It is citrus that ordinary cats detest .

(55) a. Ali Baba returned from his travels wiser.

b. ✔ It was wiser that Ali Baba returned from his travels .

(56) a. They arrived at the concert hall quickly.

b. ✔ It was quickly that they arrived at the concert hall .

What this shows is that the results from (36)-(47) do not mean that individual words cannot be
constituents; instead, in these instances the diagnostic is looking for phrasal constituents, and
in (36)-(47) (where the diagnostics fail for individual words), those individual words are not also
entire phrases.

Inflected verb phrases

Testing for the constituenthood of verb phrases is a bit more complicated than is testing for
the constituenthood of other syntactic categories. First, there are no simple pro-forms for verb
phrases in Mainstream U.S. English. The best we can do is to use the periphrastic forms do so
for substitution and do what for questions.7 (Notice that it’s only what, rather than the entire
pro-form do what, that moves to the beginning of a question.)

(57) Substitution:
a. She will write a book. → ✔ She will do so.
b. The two boys could order tuna salad sandwiches. → ✔ The two boys could do so.

(58) Question/short answer:

a. What will she do? → ✔ Write a book.
b. What could the two boys do? → ✔ Order tuna salad sandwiches.

Second, and more importantly (given our present focus on false negative results), verbs and
the verb phrases that contain them are sometimes overtly inflected for tense and/or agreement. In
Chapter 3: Constituency and hierarchical structure 104

general, diagnostics that isolate the uninflected verb phrase show a verb phrase constituent, but
inflected verbs give different results. (59) gives grammatical results for with the verb doesn’t in-
flect for the tense (future tense in English) and also when the verb does inflect for tense (past tense
in English), though notably in the latter the substituted form is also inflecting for tense.

(59) a. Substitution, uninflected verb:

She will write a book. → ✔ She will do so.
b. Substitution, inflected verb:
She wrote a book. → ✔ She did so.

In contrast, an attempt to use the Q&A diagnostic for a verb phrase is fine when the verb is
uninflected (again, English future) but gives anomalous results in the past tense when the answer
contains tense, as in (60b). The past tense question can be answered, but the verb phrase must be
uninflected, as in (60c).

(60) a. Question/short answer, uninflected verb:

What will she do? → ✔ Write a book.
b. Question/short answer, inflected verb:
What did she do? → *? Wrote a book.
c. Question/short answer, inflected verb:
What did she do? → ✔ Write a book.

Similar patterns appear in emphasis movement. Movement of uninflected verb phrases is

grammatical,8 but movement of inflected ones is not.

(61) Movement, uninflected verb phrase:

a. (She says that) she will write a book, → ✔ (and) write a book, she will .
b. though she may write a book → ✔ write a book though she may
(62) Movement, inflected verb phrase:
a. (She says that) she wrote a book, → * (and) wrote a book, she .
b. though she wrote a book → * wrote a book though she

These facts don’t have an obvious solution based on our model so far; surely constituency of a
verb phrase does not depend on whether the phrase is in past or future tense. These facts do in
fact have very natural interpretations based on the model that we develop, but it will be easier to
lay out the rationale after more of the model is established (see Exercise 5.3).
The differences between inflected and uninflected verb phrases is not always the root cause
of unacceptable diagnostics testing verb phrases. In it-clefts, even uninflected verb phrases are
largely unacceptable in focus.

(63) It-cleft, uninflected verb phrase:

She will write a book. → ⁇ It is write a book that she will .
Chapter 3: Constituency and hierarchical structure 105

(64) It-cleft, inflected verb phrase:

She wrote a book. → * It is wrote a book that she .

This instead appears to be a more general restriction about it-clefts: they are useful for diagnosing
constituency of arguments and adjuncts of a sentence, but verb phrases can never be the focus
of an it-cleft in Mainstream U.S. English. Because this is always the case, we interpret this not
as an instance of non-constituency of verb phrases, but rather as an independent restriction on
it-clefts, such that it-clefts can’t be relied on to test constituency of verb phrases.
Apart from this wrinkle concerning inflection, verb phrases behave just as we have come
to expect from other constituent types. The tests yield grammatical results for verb phrases, but
not for verbs alone.

(65) Substitution:
She will write a book. → * She will do so a book.

(66) Movement:
a. (She says that) she will write a book, → * and write, she will a book.
b. though she may write a book → * write though she may a book

(67) Question/short answer:

a. * What will she do a book?
b. * Write.

(68) It-cleft:
She will write a book. → * It is write that she will a book.

And once again, particular strings can be phrasal constituents in one syntactic context, but
not in another. For instance, write isn’t a phrasal constituent when it combines with a direct
object, but it is when used on its own. This is the source of the grammaticality contrast between
(65)–(68) and (69)–(72).

(69) Substitution:
She will write. → ✔ She will do so.

(70) Movement:
a. (She says that) she will write, → ✔ and write, she will .
b. though she may write → ✔ write though she may

(71) Question/short answer:

a. What will she do?
b. ✔ Write.

(72) It-cleft:
She will write. → ? It is write that she will .
Chapter 3: Constituency and hierarchical structure 106

Chapter 5 develops a model of phrase structure that readily explains the apparently variable
behavior of (un)inflected verb phrases as constituents (or not). The conclusions for our purposes
right now are twofold: first, we need to be aware that overt inflection on verb phrases can affect
our constituency diagnostics. And second, the larger lesson is that an ungrammatical attempt
to construct a constituency diagnostic does not mean that the string is necessarily not a con-
stituent: such conclusions must be drawn based on converging evidence from multiple sources.
Furthermore, this also points to the idea that diagnostics are not unreliable when they conflict,
it is a reminder that language is complex and these diagnostics do multiple jobs (for example,
themselves being emphatic constructions with their own requirements, in the case of emphasis
movement and it-clefts). Interpreting the evidence needs to take this state of affairs into consid-
eration.

Islands
In (73a), the doctors is a constituent, as is evident from the possibility of substituting a pronoun
for the string, as in (73b).

(73) a. We should invite the lawyers and the doctors.

b. We should invite the lawyers and them. (pointing to the doctors)

But although the doctors passes the substitution test, the other three tests yield ungram-
matical results.

(74) * The doctors, we should invite the lawyers and .

(75) a. * Who should we invite the lawyers and ?
b. * The doctors.
(76) * It is the doctors that we should invite the lawyers and .

Take Note

Earlier, we pointed out that question formation can be thought of as a combination of

substitution and movement. The parallel between movement and question formation in
(74), (75) and it-clefting in (76) suggests that the latter, too, involves movement in some
way. In the remainder of this section, we will therefore use the term ‘movement’ in a broad
sense to include all three constituenthood tests in (74)–(76).

Notice that there is nothing semantically or conceptually ill-formed about (74)–(76), since
it is possible to paraphrase the intended meaning grammatically as in (77)–(79).

(77) ✔ The doctors, we should invite together with the lawyers.

(78) a. ✔ Who should we invite together with the lawyers?
b. ✔ The doctors.
(79) ✔ It is the doctors that we should invite together with the lawyers.
Chapter 3: Constituency and hierarchical structure 107

Taken together with the grammaticality of (73b), the contrast between (74)–(76) and (77)–
(79) shows that movement of the noun phrase the doctors is somehow prevented by the specific
syntactic configuration in (74)–(76). Ross (1967) introduced the metaphorical term island for
configurations in which movement is blocked where it is expected to be possible. The conceit un-
derlying the term is that the constituents that might be expected to move, but can’t, are stranded
on an island like castaways.9
Ross identified several types of islands, including conjoined phrases like those in (74)–(76),
and his work has given rise to an enormous body of literature. Our purpose here is neither to
catalog the types of islands nor to pursue the proper linguistic analysis of them (we return to
the topic in Chapter 14), but simply to point out that constituenthood tests based on movement
will yield false negative results for phrasal constituents if they happen to be contained within
islands. In these contexts, a sentence failing to pass a movement-based diagnostic is not evidence
against constituency; the sentence is ungrammatical for an independent reason (movement out
of an island).

Why false negatives?

We’ve shown that there can be false negatives for constiteuncy diagnostics: instances where a
string consistently behaves like a constituency by some diagnostics, but is not grammatical with
other constituency diagnostics. Why exactly does this happen? Are diagnostics haphazard? The
answer to that is a definitive ‘no’, but it’s important to understand why.
There are no litmus tests for constituenthood that are separate from the grammar itself.
That is to say, constituency tests are not like a medical diagnostic test for COVID or the flu,
where some instrument or form of measurement that is external to the body can be used to gain
information on what’s happening inside the body. Rather, constituency diagnostics are more like
medical symptoms—they provide evidence for what’s going on inside the body, despite being
themselves a part of the bodily system.
So consider emphasis movement in a sentence like The DOCUMENTS, Maisha delivered. If
someone walks up to you at a work event and says that out of nowhere, you might be confused.
What’s more, on its own the sentence sounds unnatural (compare Maisha delivered the documents,
which simply reports information). It might be easy to think that the sentence The DOCUMENTS,
Maisha delivered is ungrammatical because it attempts to move a non-constituent. But the noun
phrase the documents is in fact a constituent. So what’s unnatural about the emphasis movement?
In this example, it’s the pragmatics of the construction. Emphasis movement creates emphasis,
and using emphasis without relevant context can sound unnatural (we use the word infelicitous
for this kind of pragmatic unnaturalness). So if we were in a conversation and someone brings
up the fact that Maisha delivered the relevant work, they could say, The DOCUMENTS, Maisha
delivered; the equipment, she did not. The sentence now sounds much more natural. The point, of
course, is that when we’re using a construction to test constituency (which it can do!) we have
to be sure to use the construction itself naturally, the way it prefers to be used. Otherwise, we
might generate unnatural results for reasons which have nothing to do with constituency.
Likewise, we saw above that it-clefts are ungrammatical when attempting to focus a single
lexical head (like a noun out of a noun phrase) or when attempting to focus a verb phrase. Does
this mean that the it-cleft has “failed?” No—it is just that an it-cleft is a construction with a
Chapter 3: Constituency and hierarchical structure 108

specific use, namely, focusing phrases that are themselves arguments or adjuncts of a sentence.
So if a string can appear in an it-cleft, there is good evidence that it is a constituent. Failing to
appear in an it-cleft could be for many reasons, including just that the string is not the sort of
thing that it-clefts are used to focus. This is because it is not an it-cleft’s sole function to diagnose
constituency; the cleft is itself part of the grammar of Mainstream U.S. English and serves its own
function in the language. The it-cleft systematically targets a subset of constituents, so if a phrase
can be it-clefted, it is good evidence that it is a constituent. If a string cannot be it-clefted, it could
be for a variety of reasons (one of those reasons is that the string is not a constituent, but there
are also others).
This is why no single piece of evidence is sufficient when analyzing syntax; we always
rely on multiple sources of evidence to draw reliable conclusions. It is not that diagnostics are
themselves unreliable: they are reliable when it comes to doing what they do. It-clefts and focus
movement are excellent at creating emphasis on certain kinds of constituents. But it is not as
if their main job is to diagnose constituency—they perform their own functions in the English
language, and just so happen to operate on a subset of English constituents. We can draw con-
clusions about constituency based on diagnostics, but we rely on them only with full context;
we look for converging evidence from other sources and consider ungrammatical sentences to
indicate non-constituency only potentially, not definitively (in isolation, at least).

3.2.3 Relevant diagnostics, to be used with caution

A couple of other diagnostics are also very helpful for diagnosing constituents, and we summarize
them briefly here. We have isolated these into their own section because both are easy to misuse,
so we want to introduce them with special instructions to help avoid their misapplication.
Ellipsis is a kind of grammatical construction that uses silence to specifically refer to a
familiar constituent from context. Take the English example in (80) for example:

(80) Maisha will play board games this weekend, and Lucca will too.

In this example, even though it is not said, all native English speakers know exactly what it
is that Lucca will do: play board games this weekend. Only constituents can be elided in this
fashion (elide = undergo ellipsis), and as such ellipsis constructions can be used as constituency
diagnostics. Ellipsis can appear in a conjoined sentence (as in (80), or using other conjunctions
like but, although, etc). Ellipsis can also appear in question and answer contexts as in (81), where
the answer is silent on the activity but the interpretation clearly supplies sell Girl Scout cookies
this weekend from the context.

(81) a. Will Anabella sell Girl Scout cookies this weekend?

b. Yes, she will.

Ellipsis is also possible in other kinds of conversation or narrative discourse where the silent
information is supplied from discourse context.
What is tricky about ellipsis is that proper ellipsis constructions are those where the specific
elided material can be reconstructed (in full detail) from discourse. Ellipsis does not include other
Chapter 3: Constituency and hierarchical structure 109

ways in which speakers may just not mention additional information. The example in (82) can
be easily mistaken for an ellipsis construction.

(82) a. Maisha will read on the couch the entire weekend.

b. I will read, too.

The main reason why (82b) is not in fact an ellipsis construction is the silence on where and when
the speaker will be reading could be interpreted as saying the speaker will read with Maisha in
the same way, but it does not necessarily mean that. So (82b) could be followed by the clarifica-
tion Except I plan to read in bed, just for Saturday and there would be no contradiction. But any
attempt to follow up (81b) to say that Anabella is not selling cookies would be interpreted as a
contradiction. The unmentioned material in (81) is necessarily supplied by context and is there-
fore ellipsis. The sentence in (82b) is complete, and while the speaker could be intending to imply
parallelism with the previous discussion, it’s not obligatory, and therefore not ellipsis.
Another highly useful constituency diagnostic is conjunction, also known as coordi-
nation. We will focus on the simplest version of these, the conjunction and. Conjunc-
tion/coordination necessarily conjoins two constituents of the same grammatical category.

(83) Her dad packed [cut-up apples] and [sliced oranges] in Maisha’s lunchbox.

Conjunction of the bracketed phrases in (83) suggests that 1) each of them are constituents in
their own right, and 2) they are constituents of the same type. (84c) is ungrammatical; despite
both constituents being viable to participate in conjunction, they cannot be conjoined together
because they are not constituents of the same category.

(84) a. I like [apples] and [oranges].

b. I like [to run] and [to swim].
c. *I like [apples] and [to swim].

One of the reasons that conjunction has to be applied with caution is that conjunction at
times facilitates and interacts with other grammatical processes. So for example, conjunction in
(80) above was a viable way to license ellipsis. But without taking ellipsis into account, it would
be tempting to suggest that Lucca will is a constituent on its own that is of the same type as
Maisha will play board games this weekend (which, we will see in what follows, it is not).
Both ellipsis and conjunction are in fact quite reliable constituency diagnostics, and deserve
to be included in analytical discussions. But both have potential confounds to be mindful of.
Specifically, when using them to diagnose constituency, you want to be attentive to whether
either of the constructions is perhaps more complicated than originally intended. Are any other
constructions (like ellipsis) co-occurring? Is the pronunciation (prosody) normal or are there
obligatory pauses or emphases that you might not have expected? Sometimes an altered prosody
is a sign of a complicated syntactic construction at play. As always, it is for reasons like this that
we consider more than a single constituency diagnostic: it can be all too easy to misinterpret
the result of a single diagnostic when each construction comes with its own quirks and specific
usages. A collective and recurring pattern of constituency diagnostic results, on the other hand,
is much more reliable.
Chapter 3: Constituency and hierarchical structure 110

Representing syntactic constituenthood 3.3

In Chapter 1, § 1.5.1, we will introduce tree diagrams as a convenient way of representing syn-
tactic structure. For mathematicians working in the field of graph theory, the formal properties
of tree diagrams are interesting in their own right, but for syntacticians, the interest of trees lies
in the fact that they are representations, or models, of constituent structure. In other words,
the graphic structure of a tree on the page is intended as a statement (or at least, a hypothesis)
about the way that speakers group together syntactic elements in their minds. In a good model,
the properties of the model correspond straightforwardly to the properties of the domain of in-
quiry. Such a close correspondence allows us to state observations and generalizations about
the domain of inquiry without undue complication. Moreover, if we’re lucky, we might even be
able to use our understanding of the model’s formal properties as a sort of conceptual lever to
generate hypotheses and to discover facts and generalizations about the domain of inquiry that
would otherwise escape notice.

3.3.1 A case study: The existence of verb phrases

In light of these considerations, let’s consider the sentence in (85), focusing particularly on the
constituenthood of the underlined string.

(85) The secretary will draft the letter.

According to the two tests that apply to verb phrases, the string draft the letter is a con-
stituent.

(86) Substitution:
The secretary will draft the letter. → The secretary will do so.

(87) Question/short answer:

a. What will the secretary do?
b. Draft the letter.

Having established this fact, let’s now consider two alternative representations of the sen-
tence. (88a) proposes more structural hierarchy (including an InflPhr and a VerbPhr), whereas
(88b) is an alternative, ‘flatter’ tree where most constituents are on the same level as each
other.
Chapter 3: Constituency and hierarchical structure 111

(88) a. b.
Sentence Sentence

NounPhr InflPhr NounPhr Infl TrVerb NounPhr

will draft
Det Noun Infl VerbPhr Det Noun Det Noun
the secretary will the secretary the letter
TrVerb NounPhr
draft
Det Noun
the letter

At first glance, the flatter tree might be argued to be preferable on the grounds that it is
simpler in the sense of containing fewer nodes. But let’s focus on the question of which tree
is a better representation of the sentence as it exists in an English speaker’s mind. Specifically,
let’s ask whether either of the trees in (88) has some graphic property that corresponds to the
results of the constituenthood tests in (86) and (87). In (88a), the answer is ‘yes’, since there is a
single node (the one labeled VerbPhr) that dominates all and only the words in the string draft the
letter, a string which we showed in (86)-(87) behaves like a constituent in this sentence. We say
that the node exhaustively dominates the string (for more details, see § 11). By contrast, the
tree in (88b) lacks such a node and has no other graphic property corresponding to the string’s
constituenthood. Clearly, then, (88a) is a more useful model of the sentence, because it follows
the natural convention in (89).

(89) Syntactic constituents are represented graphically as nodes in a tree.

(This description will be refined below)

As is always the case, if (88a) is an accurate representation of our mental grammar of the
sentence, we expect multiple kinds of evidence to converge on that conclusion. We already see
this with the substitution evidence in (86) and the Q&A/sentence fragment diagnostic in (87).
(90)-(92) all confirm the presence of a verb phrase constituent in this sentence.

(90) Conjunction:
The secretary will [ draft the letter ] and [ appear before Congress ].

(91) Ellipsis:
Q: Will the secretary draft the letter?
A: He will .
gap is interpreted as: draft the letter

(92) Emphasis movement:

The secretary said he will draft the letter, and draft the letter, he will .

At the same time, some diagnostics show a different result.

Chapter 3: Constituency and hierarchical structure 112

(93) * It is draft the letter that the secretary will .

But as we noted above, all it-clefts for verb phrases fail, so (93) doesn’t actually tell us anything
informative about whether there is a verb phrase constituent. Therefore, these tests confirm the
finding that the sentence behaves as if there is a verb phrase constituent independent of the other
components of the sentence (including tense), as drawn in (88a).

3.3.2 Trees versus brackets

Syntacticians use both trees and bracket structures to show the exact same things. A node on a
tree represents a constituent, whereas square brackets are used to isolate a constituent. So the
noun phrase from (88a) can also be represented as in (94):

(94) [NounPhr [Det the ] [Noun letter ] ]

The verb phrase from (88a) can be drawn with a tree as in that example, or with a bracket structure
as in (95).

(95) [VerbPhr [Verb draft ] [NounPhr [Det the ] [Noun letter ] ] ]

You may well find (95) harder to read/interpret (we do!). And you can imagine how visually com-
plicated larger structures would be in bracket notation. This is a reason that we sometimes avoid
bracket structures—because they only demarcate structures in one visual dimension (horizontal),
they make less use of visual differentiation to communicate structure, which can make it harder
to interpret them. So why use them at all? One way they are especially helpful is when com-
municating underspecified structure. (96) gives the sentence we’ve been considering and shows
that there exists a verb phrase constituent in it.

(96) The secretary will [VerbPhr draft the letter ].

We have tools in trees for underspecification also; we use triangles for constituents where
we don’t want to show substructure. So (97) shows essentially the same thing as (96) in a tree
(adding a node and triangle for the secretary: trees force somewhat more precision than brackets
do).

(97) Sentence

NounPhr Infl VerbPhr

will
The secretary draft the letter

When should you use brackets, and when should you use a tree? In general the guiding
principle is to use whichever tool best communicates what you are trying to tell your audience
with the visualization. In our estimation, (96) shows this particular underspecified structure more
naturally than the tree in (97) does, but the full verb phrase structure is much more readable as a
tree in (88a) than it is as a bracket structure in (95).
Chapter 3: Constituency and hierarchical structure 113

3.3.3 Basic terms and relations

We have seen above that the graphic structures that we refer to as trees are very useful for
modeling constituency and phrase structure in natural language. This section discusses a number
of basic definitions about the components of trees (and relationships between those components)
that are useful for us to analyze grammar.

Dominance
Trees consist of a set of nodes connected by branches. It is sometimes useful to distinguish
between two types of nodes: terminal nodes, which are labeled with vocabulary items, and
nonterminal nodes, which are labeled with syntactic categories. In a very simple tree like (98),
the terminal nodes are the Det(erminer) node (the) and the N(oun) node (children), and NounPhr
is a nonterminal Node.

(98) NounPhr

Det Noun
the children

The NounPhr node is a branching node, with more than one branch emanating from it. All
terminal nodes are non-branching by definition, but at times there are non-terminal nodes that are
also non-branching (meaning they have only one element below them in the tree). The NounPhr
node is related to Det and N in this tree by the dominance relation. Dominance is a theoretical
primitive; in other words, it is an irreducibly basic notion, comparable to a mathematical concept
like “point”. Dominance is represented graphically in terms of top-to-bottom order. That is, if
a node A dominates a node B, A appears above B in the tree. In (98), for instance, NounPhr
dominates Det and N. The node that dominates all other nodes in a tree, and is itself dominated
by none, is called the root node. In (98), NounPhr is the root node. In a slightly more complex
tree like (99) that shows the verb phrase visit the children, the NounPhr node is no longer the root
node: instead, VerbPhr is the root node in (99).

(99) VerbPhr

V NounPhr
visit
Det Noun
the children

Dominance is a transitive relation (in the logical sense of the term, not the grammatical
one). In other words, if A dominates B, and if B dominates C, then it is necessarily the case
that A dominates C. So in (99) the VerbPhr node dominates the NounPhr node, and the NounPhr
node dominates the N node, so VerbPhr also necessarily dominates N.10 An important subcase
of dominance is immediate dominance. This is the case where the two nodes in question
are connected by a single branch without any intervening nodes. More formally, immediate
dominance is defined as in (100).
Chapter 3: Constituency and hierarchical structure 114

(100) A immediately dominates B if and only if

a. A dominates B, and
b. there is no node C, distinct from A and B, such that A dominates C and C dominates
B.

Unlike dominance, immediate dominance is not a transitive relation. This is apparent from
even a simple structure like (99), where VerbPhr immediately dominates NounPhr, and NounPhr
immediately dominates N, but VerbPhr does not immediately dominate N because NounPhr is
distinct from VerbPhr and N and intervenes between the two.

Precedence
In general, trees are more complex than the very simple case in (98), and they contain multiple
nodes that have more than one branch emanating from them, as in (101).

(101) Sentence

NounPhr1 InflPhr

Det Noun Infl VerbPhr

the secretary will
Verb NounPhr2
draft
Det Noun
the letter

In such trees, two nodes are related either by dominance or by a second primitive relation,
precedence. Precedence is represented graphically in terms of left-to-right order. Dominance
and precedence are mutually exclusive. That is, if A dominates B, A cannot precede B, and con-
versely, if A precedes B, A cannot dominate B. Like dominance, precedence is a transitive rela-
tion, and just as with dominance, there is a nontransitive subcase called immediate precedence.
The definition of immediate precedence is analogous to that of immediate dominance; the term
dominates in (100) is simply replaced by precedes. The difference between precedence, which is
transitive, and immediate precedence, which isn’t, can be illustrated in connection with (101).
The first instance of Noun (secretary) both precedes and immediately precedes Verb, and Verb in
turn both precedes and immediately precedes the second instance of NounPhr (the letter). The
first instance of Noun precedes the second instance of NounPhr, but not immediately.
Chapter 3: Constituency and hierarchical structure 115

3.3.4 Derived terms and relations

Kinship terminology
Certain relations among nodes are often expressed by using kinship terms. If A dominates B,
then A is the ancestor of B, and B is the descendant of A. If A immediately dominates B, then
A is the parent of B, and B is the child of A. If A immediately dominates B and C, then B and
C are siblings.11 In (101), Sentence is the root node; in the kinship metaphor, it is the ancestor
of every other node in the tree. The terminal secretary is the child of NounPhr1. NounPhr1 and
VerbPhr are siblings, and so are Verb and NounPhr2, but draft and the second instance of the are
not (they don’t have the same parent node). Notice, incidentally, that syntactic trees are single-
parent families. Most theories of syntax do not allow nodes with more than one parent.

Branching
Depending on the number of children, nodes are classified as either nonbranching (one child)
or branching (more than one child). A more detailed system of terminology distinguishes
nodes that are unary-branching (one child), binary-branching (two children), and ternary-
branching (three children). Nodes with more than three children are hardly ever posited in
syntactic theory. Indeed, according to an influential hypothesis (Kayne 1984), Universal Gram-
mar allows at most binary-branching nodes. According to this hypothesis, it is a formal universal
of human language that no node can have more than two branches (a parent node has no more
than two children).

Exhaustive dominance
Some node A exhaustively dominates two or more nodes B, C, … if and only if A dominates
all and only B, C, … For instance, A dominates the string B C in (102a)–(102c), but exhaustively
dominates it only in (102a). In (102b) and (102c), A fails to exhaustively dominate B and C be-
cause it runs afoul of the only condition (it dominates too much material). In (102d), A fails to
exhaustively dominate B and C for the opposite reason. A doesn’t dominate C, because it runs
afoul of the all condition (it dominates too little material).

(102) a. X b. Y c. Y d. X

A Y A X A X A C

B C B C D D E B

B C

As is evident from (102b)–(102d), dominance is a necessary but not a sufficient condition

for exhaustive dominance. This also puts us in a position to create a more precise definition of
constituency than we’ve been able to up until this point.
Chapter 3: Constituency and hierarchical structure 116

(103) Constituent (final definition)

A constituent is a string of terminals that is exhaustively dominated by a single node.

C-command
An important derived relation in syntactic theory is c-command,12 which is defined as fol-
lows.

(104) A c-commands B if and only if

a. neither A nor B dominates the other, and
b. the lowest branching node that dominates A also dominates B.

Notice that the notion of c-command is defined in terms of dominance and makes no mention of
precedence. It is tempting to assume that c-command logically implies precedence, or vice versa,
but it is a temptation to be firmly resisted.13 Notice further that c-command is not necessarily a
symmetric relation. In other words, a node A can c-command a node B without B c-commanding
A. For instance, in (101), InflPhr c-commands secretary (N) (because the first branching node
dominating InflPhr, namely Sentence, dominates secretary), but not vice versa (because the first
branching node that dominates secretary, namely NounPhr1, doesn’t dominate VerbPhr).
Although c-command isn’t necessarily a symmetric relation, it is possible for two nodes to
c-command each other. This is the case when the two nodes are siblings. Syntactic siblinghood
is also known as mutual c-command or symmetric c-command. So in (101) NounPhr1 and
InflPhr c-command each other (the first node that dominates each is Sentence, and Sentence
dominates each of them).
An inquisitive reader may look at the c-command relation and feel that it appears to be
rather arbitrary: why would this particular configuration matter? We could specify any number
of arbitrary relations between the various nodes on a tree. The short answer is that human lan-
guage seems to care—a variety of patterns in language seem to be dependent on this notion of
c-command to describe them accurately. Binding effects are one major one (see Chapter 15), but
there are others, as some of the exercises at the end of this chapter explore.

Regarding scientific models 3.4

We conclude this discussion of the model character of syntactic representations by emphasizing
that models are just that—models, and not the actual domain of inquiry itself. The purpose of
any model is to help us understand some part of reality that is too complex to understand in
all of its detail, at least all at once. This means that models are partial in two respects. A first
way is that they leave out properties of a phenomenon that aren’t relevant from a particular
point of view. This fact is often stated as the maxim “Don’t mistake the map for the territory”.
Chapter 3: Constituency and hierarchical structure 117

For instance, a mountaineer’s map might show topographical information in great detail, but
completely ignore political boundaries, whereas just the reverse might be true of a diplomat’s
map. Both topographic information and political boundaries are relevant to someone walking
over those spaces, and are equally real, but are not equally relevant to any given map: maps can
serve a particular purpose.
Analogously, in linguistics, syntactic models leave out many important properties of lan-
guage, such as real-world plausibility, pragmatic felicity, the location of intonation breaks, varia-
tion based on social factors like race, gender, age, and other aspects of identity, and so on. These
are the focus of other subdisciplines of linguistics, which in turn often ignore syntactic struc-
ture. Our attention on the aspects of language we are working on should not be interpreted as
trivializing the aspects we are not working on. But these choices, of course, are not always incon-
sequential: sometimes we choose not to build a factor into our model that turns out to be relevant
to understanding the phenomenon, and we have to change what we include in our model.
A second way that models are partial is what we just alluded to: models are subject to
revision as our understanding of a particular domain improves and deepens. Another way of
putting this—which sounds more impressive—is to say that scientific progress is possible. You
will experience this as this textbook proceeds; some of what we present in initial chapters is
the product of simplifying assumptions that are very good for introducing new concepts, but
aren’t good enough as final descriptions/analyses. But even in a longer-term mindset, theories
of syntax are not yet at the same stage of stability as, say, the periodical table of elements in
chemistry, or the theory of evolution in biology. Syntax is a younger science (and, along with
other aspects of human cognition, still part of the big, hard problem of human consciousness).
There are many things that we can report with high confidence about natural language syntax,
and this textbook focuses on those things. But a student continuing in syntax can expect details
of our model to adjust and shift as they get deeper into the field. The model we are building is
helpful in many ways, but it is a model, and not the final truth about syntax. So you should also
expect adjustments and changes to the model.

New Empirical Observations

▶ Constituents are strings within a sentence that consistently behave as if they are a
unit.
▶ Constituency tests are grammatical constructions that target constituents: they
can be leveraged to help determine whether a string is a syntactic constituent.
▶ Constituency tests in English include:

• substitution • it-clefts
• movement • ellipsis
• questions and short answers • coordination

▶ All constituency tests are their own grammatical constructions with their own re-
quirements and restrictions, which can be violated separately from constituency
concerns. Therefore so-called constituency tests can be ungrammatical for reasons
 Chapter 3: Constituency and hierarchical structure 118

separate from constituency questions (i.e., false negatives exist).

▶ Syntactic constituents may not align with other kinds of linguistic constituents (for
example, prosodic constituents).
▶ Phrase structure is hierarchical (larger constituents contain smaller constituents).

Components of the Theoretical Model

▶ Constituenthood may be graphically modeled by trees.

▶ A constituent is a node in a tree.
▶ A parent node may have no more than two children (binary-branching hypothesis,
Kayne 1984).
▶ We use trees to define structural relationships between components of a sentence.

▷ dominate ▷ precede ▷ parent of

▷ immediately ▷ immediate precede ▷ child of
dominate ▷ ancestor of ▷ c-command
▷ exhaustively ▷ descendant of
dominate ▷ sibling of

Notes 3.5
1. It’s worth noting that the syntactic category of the pro-forms in (4) and (5) differs from the category of the underlined
strings. As just mentioned, the pro-forms are adverbs, whereas the underlined strings are prepositional phrases. The
mismatch in syntactic category doesn’t affect the validity of the test, however. All that is necessary is that the
pro-form can replace the string, preserving (at least roughly) the original meaning.

2. Under certain discourse conditions, English allows the question word to remain in situ (that is, in the place where
it substitutes before it moves), as illustrated in (i). See Chapter 8 for more discussion.

(i) a. Who did you see? (information question or echo question)

b. You saw who? (only echo question)

3. It is worth pointing out that focus-ground partitioning is relevant not just for it-clefts, but also for questions and
(short) answers. The focus in a question is the unknown information expressed by the question word. A short answer
to a question consists of a focus and no other material. Repeating the ground of the question yields a full sentence
(that is, includes material apart from the focus).

(i) a. What animals detest the smell of citrus fruits? (question)

b. Ordinary cats. (short answer)
 Chapter 3: Constituency and hierarchical structure 119

c. Ordinary cats detest the smell of citrus fruits. (full answer)

(ii) a. What do ordinary cats detest? (question)
b. The smell of citrus fruits. (short answer)
c. Ordinary cats detest the smell of citrus fruits. (full answer)

4. Notice that the resultant interpretation is distinct from the one that would result from first combining cat and the
and then combining the cat with the relative clause. The denotation of the cat is a unique member of the set of cats.
Combining the cat with the relative clause would attribute to this unique entity the property of having chased the
rat. Given that the cat already denotes a unique entity, the property of having chased the rat wouldn’t be a defining
property of the cat in question; it would simply be an additional, more or less accidental one. The interpretation in
question is possible semantically, and it can be expressed by using a non-restrictive relative clause, as in (i).

(i) This is the cat, which (by the way) chased the rat.

But (i) is not synonymous with (26), where the rat-chasing property is restrictive, that is, defining.

5. In contrast to the statement in row 2 of Table 3.1, the statement in (i), derived from the statement in row one of Table
3.1 by the modus tollens rule of propositional logic, is true.

(i) If a string isn’t a constituent, then it doesn’t pass the constituenthood tests.

6. For simplicity, we ignore syntax-morphology mismatches of the sort alluded to earlier.

7. For completeness, we should mention that do so substitution and the question test for verb phrases are subject to a
semantic restriction. Specifically, do so and do what cannot substitute for verb phrases with so-called stative verbs
like know or want.

(i) a. They { know her parents, want the cookies }.

b. * They do so.
(ii) a. What do they do?
b. * { Know her parents, want the cookies }.

As their name implies, stative verbs refer to states (rather than to activities or accomplishments), and a reasonably
reliable diagnostic for them is their inability to appear in the progressive construction.

(iii) a. * They are { knowing her parents; wanting the cookies }. (stative verb)
b. ✔ They are { meeting her parents; eating the cookies }. (nonstative verb)

Since do is the prototypical activity verb, it is not surprising that expressions containing it, like do so and do what,
give rise to a semantic clash when they substitute for verb phrases containing stative verbs.

8. It is true that movement of verb phrases in out-of-the-blue contexts, as in (i), is not very felicitous:

(i) Out of the blue (i.e. with no preceding discourse context):

Write a book, she will .

But it is clearly grammatical given appropriate discourse contexts, as the examples in the text show. This
is another demonstration of how constituency diagnostics are themselves part of language, not magical tests that
are divorced from language. The emphasis movement here does diagnose constituents, but it is also an emphasis
construction, and will sound odd if used in a context where emphasis is unnatural.

9. The island metaphor is not perfect. Although constituents can’t move out of an island, islands as a whole are able to
move, as shown in (i)–(iii).
 Chapter 3: Constituency and hierarchical structure 120

(i) ✔ The doctors and lawyers, we should invite .

(ii) a. ✔ Who should we invite ?
b. ✔ The lawyers and the doctors.
(iii) ✔ It is the lawyers and the doctors that we should invite .

10. Does a node A dominate itself? If the answer to this question is defined to be yes, then the dominance relation is
reflexive (again, in the logical sense of the term, not the grammatical one); if not, then it is irreflexive. In principle,
it is possible to build a coherent formal system based on either answer. From the point of view of syntactic theory,
it is preferable to define dominance as reflexive because it simplifies the definitions of linguistically relevant derived
relations such as c-command and binding (Chapter 15 discusses binding in detail).

11. The female kinship terms mother, daughter, and sister are typically used for the corresponding sex-/gender-neutral
ones in work on syntax; this textbook defaults to the gender-neutral terms.

12. The odd name c-command is short for ‘constituent-command’ and reflects the fact that the c-command relation is a
generalization of a relation (now obsolete) called command, defined as in (i) (Langacker 1969, 167).

(i) A commands B if and only if

a. neither A nor B dominates the other, and
b. the S(entence) node that most immediately dominates A also dominates B.

13. The Linear Correspondence Axiom (LCA) proposes that c-command relations are always expressed as precedence
relations (Kayne 1994). Contrary to what is sometimes believed, this proposal underscores the logical independence
of c-command and precedence rather than eliminating it. If precedence were logically derivable from c-command,
there would be no need for an axiom postulating a correspondence between them (indeed, given the meaning of
the term ‘axiom’, such an axiom would be a contradiction in terms). Kayne’s proposal has been highly influential in
various ways, but is by no means universally accepted.

Exercises and problems 3.6

Exercise 3.1: Identifying constituents A
Using the constituenthood tests reviewed in this chapter, determine whether the underlined
strings in the following sentences are (phrasal) constituents. Some of the sentences below have
more than one interpretation. Begin by focusing on the ordinary interpretation, and then con-
sider any more unusual readings.
Chapter 3: Constituency and hierarchical structure 121

Take Note

Here and throughout the exercises in the book, your answer should include not just your
conclusions, but also the supporting evidence. What we mean by the term evidence is one
or more linguistic expressions (sentences or phrases) together with an indication of their
grammaticality (checkmark or asterisk). Sometimes providing the evidence is all that is
necessary. At other times, a bit of discussion is required to explain the relevance of the
evidence to the question at hand.

(1) a. They put the car in the garage.

b. They put the car in the garage.
c. They put the car in the garage.
(2) a. They know the guy with the fedora.
b. They know the guy with the fedora.
(3) a. They threw the towel in the closet.
b. They threw in the towel.

Exercise 3.2: Identifying constituents B

For the two sentences below, give a tree structure of the sentence, and give evidence (in the form
of acceptable or unacceptable sentences) that the structure you propose is accurate. That is to
say, for all constituents in your tree structure, give at least one constituency diagnostic showing
that it is, in fact, a constituent.

(1) This little piggy went to the market.

(2) The doting grandma gave the overstimulated children big hugs after Thanksgiving dinner.

Exercise 3.3: Evaluating structures for accuracy

How well does each of the trees in (1) and (2) represent the syntactic structure of the sentence it
is intended to represent? Here are key questions to consider:
• Are any strings represented as constituents that shouldn’t be?
• Are any strings not represented as constituents that should be?
• Are any of the trees misleading in other respects?

Background Info

Abbreviations for syntactic categories:

• Det - determiner (roughly speaking, • PrepP - prepositional phrase

article or demonstrative pronoun) • TrVerb - transitive verb
• NounPhr - noun phrase • VerbPhr - verb phrase
Chapter 3: Constituency and hierarchical structure 122

(1) a. Sentence

NounPhr InflPhr

Pronoun Infl VerbPhr

they will
TrVerb NounPhr
put
Det NounPhr
the
Noun PrepPhr
car
Prep NounPhr
in
Det Noun
the garage
b. Sentence

NounPhr InflPhr

Pronoun Infl VerbPhr

they will
TrVerb NounPhr
put
Det Noun PrepPhr
the car
Prep NounPhr
in
Det Noun
the garage
c. Sentence

NounPhr InflPhr

Pronoun Infl VerbPhr

they will
TrVerb NounPhr PrepPhr
put
Det Noun Prep NounPhr
the car in
Det Noun
the garage
Chapter 3: Constituency and hierarchical structure 123

(2) a. Sentence

NounPhr InflPhr

Pronoun Infl VerbPhr

they will
TrVerb NounPhr
know
Det NounPhr
the
Noun PrepPhr
guy
Prep NounPhr
with
Det Noun
the fedora
b. Sentence

NounPhr InflPhr

Pronoun Infl VerbPhr

they will
TrVerb NounPhr
know
Det Noun PrepPhr
the guy
Prep NounPhr
with
Det Noun
the fedora
c. Sentence

NounPhr InflPhr

Pronoun Infl VerbPhr

they will
TrVerb NounPhr PrepPhr
know
Det Noun Prep NounPhr
the guy with
Det Noun
the fedora
Chapter 3: Constituency and hierarchical structure 124

Exercise 3.4: Translating from brackets to trees

For each of the bracket structures below, draw a tree structure that exactly matches the bracket
structure in its constituency. If a portion of the bracket structure is underspecified, leave it un-
derspecified in the tree as well.

(1) a. The children will read three books this weekend.

b. [Sentence [NounPhr [Det The] [N children] ] [Tense will] [VerbPhr [V read] [NounPhr three books]
[NounPhr this weekend] ] ]
(2) a. All the tired teachers will take a long vacation.
b. [Sentence [NounPhr All the tired teachers] [Tense will] [VerbPhr [V take] [NounPhr [Det a] [Adj
long] [N vacation] ] ]
(3) a. The guests put their names in the visitors log.
b. [Sentence [NounPhr The guests] [VerbPhr [V put] [NounPhr their names] [PrepPhr [P in] [NounPhr
the visitors log] ] ] ].

Exercise 3.5: Translating from tree structures to bracket structures

For each of the tree structures below, draw a bracket structure that exactly matches the tree
structure in its constituency. If a portion of the tree is underspecified, leave it underspecified in
the bracket structure as well.

(1) a. After dinner the children will play outside.

b. Sentence

PrepPhr NounPhr Tense VerbPhr

will
after dinner the children V P
play outside

(2) a. My dad drinks a big cup of coffee every morning.

b. Sentence

NounPhr VerbPhr

Pron N V NounPhr NounPhr

my father drinks
Det Adj N PP every morning
a big cup
of coffee
Chapter 3: Constituency and hierarchical structure 125

(3) a. Lilly is still sleeping even though it is noon.

b. Sentence

NounPhr Aux VerbPhr

is
Lilly Adv V PP
still sleeping
even though it is noon

Exercise 3.6: Identifying structural relationships

The questions you will answer below are based on the abstract tree structure given in (1).

(1) A

I B

C H

D G J K

E F L M
1. What nodes dominate G?
2. What nodes (if any) does G dominate?
3. What nodes (if any) dominate H?
4. What nodes (if any) does H dominate?
5. What nodes (if any) does C exhaustively dominate?
6. What nodes (if any) does H c-command?
7. What nodes (if any) does G c-command?
8. What nodes (if any) are the sibling of B?
9. What node (if any) is the parent of B?
10. What nodes (if any) are children of C?
11. what terminal nodes (if any) does H exhaustively dominate?
12. What node (if any) exhaustively dominates the nodes E, F, L, and M?
Chapter 3: Constituency and hierarchical structure 126

Exercise 3.7: Substitution

The substitution test discussed in detail in this chapter and the substitution operation introduced
in Chapter 1 are not identical, but they are related. In a few sentences, explain how.

Exercise 3.8: Dealing with conflicting diagnostics A

The examples below attempt to apply constituency diagnostics for the potential constituent that
is bracketed in (1). The constituency diagnostics do not all show the same result. Your task is to
assess whether or not the bracketed string is in fact a constituent, and to discuss (and, preferably,
explain) why the diagnostics do not all agree with each other. Judgments are provided for each
sentence based on the intuitions of a Mainstream U.S. English speaker.

(1) The defense will [ defend the goal aggressively. ]

(2) Attempted constituency diagnostics:

a. ? Defend the goal aggressively, the defense will.
b. ✔ The defense will defend the goal aggressively, and the goalkeeper will, too. (inter-
pretation: the goalkeeper will defend the goal aggressively).
c. ✔ The defense will defend the goal aggressively, and the goalkeeper will do so also.
(interpretation of do so = defend the goal aggressively).
d. * It is defend the goal aggressively that the defense will.
e. ✔ The defense will defend the goal aggressively and stop the offense.
f. ✔ The coach said that the defense will defend the goal aggressively, and defend the
goal aggressively, they will.
g. ✔ The defense will defend the goal aggressively and immediately.
i. Q: What will the defense do?
ii. A: ✔ defend the goal aggressively.

Problem 3.1: Constituency of (potential) PPs

The two examples in (1) bracket a potential PP constituent.

(1) a. The children jumped [ in the water ].

b. The open window let [ in the cold air ].

Using constituency diagnostics as introduced in this chapter, argue for each example
whether this bracketed string is or is not a constituent. This exercise requires native speaker
judgments about English; you can use your own if you are a speaker of English, or construct
sentences and ask any native English speaker for judgments.
Chapter 3: Constituency and hierarchical structure 127

Problem 3.2: Phrasal and prepositional verbs: turn on

Particle verbs in Germanic languages pose a number of interesting syntactic puzzles. This exercise
investigates a limited component of those puzzles. In English, like other Germanic languages,
many constructions have a preposition-like particle following the verb.

(1) a. I messed up the assignment.

b. I climbed up the stairs.
c. I looked after my friend.

As it turns out, there are a number of sub-categories of these particle verbs, some of which
can be identified based on their constituent structure. Specifically looking at the constituency
of the potential prepositional phrase following the verb, note the difference between climb up
and mess up in how they behave when testing for a PP constituent using the it-cleft constituency
diagnostic.

(2) a. It is up the stairs that I climbed.

b. * It is up the assignment that I messed.

This suggests that in an example like (1b) there is a PP constituent, but there is no PP constituent
in an example like (1a).

(3) a. Climb [up the stairs]

b. * Mess [up the assignment]

For the sake of this exercise, we can use the term “prepositional verb” for a particle verb construc-
tion where the P forms a PP constituent with the following noun phrase, and the term “phrasal
verb” for a particle verb construction where the P does not form a constituent with the following
noun phrase. The structure in (4b) is underspecified, so we won’t be trying to offer exhaustive
structures for phrasal verbs; rather, we are working to distinguish phrasal verbs from preposi-
tional verbs.

(4) a. Prepositional Verb: [VP V [PP P NP ] ]

b. Phrasal Verb: [VP V P NP ] ]

For this exercise, you will look at the English phrase turn on. This phrase is multiply-ambiguous,
as we illustrate below.

(5) a. Alex turned on College Avenue. (physical turning onto a road)

b. Alex turned on the light. (activation)
c. Alex turned on Jay.
i. sexual arousal—Alex aroused Jay
ii. betrayal—Alex betrayed Jay

Your task is to use constituency diagnostics (or other differences you note) to say whether the
ambiguities here are lexical ambiguities or structural ambiguities. That is, do these interpretations
Chapter 3: Constituency and hierarchical structure 128

all have the same syntactic structure and just mean different things (lexical ambiguity)? Or are
there different syntactic structures involved (syntactic ambiguity)? Or is it some of both?
If you are a native speaker of English, you can provide the judgments for the sentences you create
on your own. If you are not a native speaker of English, you will need to work with someone
who is, or ask someone who is for judgments on the diagnostic sentences you construct.
We specifically recommend testing for the potential PP constituent, though you can note other
patterns that you find as well.

Problem 3.3: Distribution of English any

Examine the distribution of any in English based on the data below. What licenses the acceptabil-
ity of any in a sentence? What structural relationship must any be in with this licensor?

Take Note

No judgments are marked on these examples. You will need to mark the judgments your-
self.

(1) a. Jay read seven books last night.

b. Seven books were read last night.
(2) Jay read any books last night.
(3) a. Jay didn’t read any books last night
b. Any books weren’t read last night.
(4) a. The person that didn’t like reading read 7 books last night.
b. The person that didn’t like reading read any books last night.
(5) a. The Sagehens never lost any games before today.
b. The Sagehens always lost any games before today.
(6) a. The never-beaten Sagehens lost any games before today.
b. The always-beaten Sagehens lost any games before today.

List of structural relationships between nodes from § 3.3 (for reference):

• dominate • immediate precede • parent of

• immediately dominate • ancestor of • child of
• exhaustively dominate • descendant of • c-command
• precede • sibling of
Chapter 3: Constituency and hierarchical structure 129

Problem 3.4: English -self phrases

Section 3.3 above introduced various structural relationships that are represented in tree struc-
tures that appear to be significant in natural language syntax.
Self-phrases are morphemes known as reflexives (also called anaphors) which do not refer
to an individual on their own—instead they pick up their meaning from another element in the
sentence (the antecedent). In the examples below, coreference (phrases referring to the same
individual) is marked with subscripted numbers. What structural relationship does the anaphor
and the antecedent need to be in for a grammatical sentence to result?

(1) a. Jamal1 saw himself1 in the mirror.

b. * Himself1 saw Jamal1 .

(2) a. [Jamal’s mother]1 saw herself1 in the mirror.

b. * [[Jamal1 ]’s mother] saw himself1 in the mirror.

(3) a. [The folks sitting next to Jamal]1 saw themselves1 in the mirror.
b. * [ The folks sitting next to [Jamal1 ]] saw himself1 in the mirror.

List of structural relationships between nodes from § 3.3 (for reference):

• dominate • immediate precede • parent of

• immediately dominate • ancestor of • child of
• exhaustively dominate • descendant of • c-command
• precede • sibling of

Problem 3.5: Pied-piping and preposition stranding in English

Movement operations are excellent constituency diagnostics. In English we can draw on two
kinds of movements: movements of wh-words in questions, and movements of non-wh-words
for emphasis. Likewise, it-clefts can be used to diagnose constituents.

(1) a. The children read the lengthy book.

b. Which book did the children read?
c. The lengthy book, the children read (not the short one).
d. It was the lengthy book that the children read.

In the example below there is question about whether or not there is a prepositional phrase
(PrepPhr) constituent.

(2) The children ran down the big hill.

(3) a. Which hill did the children run down?

b. The big hill, the children ran down (not the small one).
c. It was the big hill that the children ran down.
Chapter 3: Constituency and hierarchical structure 130

(4) a. Where did the children run?

b. Down the big hill, the children ran (not up the small hill).
c. It was down the big hill that the children ran.

Discuss how this evidence affects your analysis of the constituency of (2). Is there a preposi-
tional phrase constituent, or not? How is it possible for all of the examples in (3) and (4) to be
grammatical?

Identifying Puzzles 3.1: Dealing with conflicting diagnostics B

The examples below attempt to apply constituency diagnostics for the potential constituent that
is bracketed in (1). The constituency diagnostics do not all show the same result. Your task is to
assess whether or not the bracketed string is in fact a constituent, and to discuss (and, preferably,
explain) why the diagnostics do not all agree with each other. Judgments are provided for each
sentence based on the intuitions of a Mainstream U.S. English speaker.

(1) The guardian dog always looks [after his goats].

(2) Attempted constituency diagnostics:

a. The guardian dog always looks after his goats and after his sheep.
b. * The guardian dog always looks there. (* on the intended interpretation of looking
after the goats)
c. * It is after his goats that the guardian dog always looks.
d. * After his goats, the guardian dog always looks.
e. Q: Who does the guardian dog always look after?
(different possible answers considered below)
A1: his goats
A2: after his goats
(dispreferred to A1, but still grammatical)
A3: his goats and his sheep
A4: after his goats and after his sheep
(dispreferred to A3, but still grammatical)
f. The guardian dog looks after his goats, and the farmer does too. (interpretation =
the farmer looks after his goats)
g. The guardian dog looks after his goats and chases coyotes.

The diagnostics do not all point in the same direction, and the material in this chapter does
not provide an easy explanation. Explain what diagnostics are inconsistent with each other, and
postulate a rationale for why the diagnostics do not reach the same conclusion.
 4
Some basic linguistic
relations

Chapter outline
4.1 Predicates and arguments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132
4.1.1 Semantic arguments of predicates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132
4.1.2 Aristotelian versus Fregean predicates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
4.1.3 Valency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
4.2 Modification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
4.3 Thematic roles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
4.3.1 Agent, cause, and instrument . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140
4.3.2 Experiencer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140
4.3.3 Recipient . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
4.3.4 Location, path, and goal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
4.3.5 Measure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142
4.3.6 Theme . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142
4.3.7 Intermediate summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142
4.4 Grammatical relations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
4.4.1 Subjects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
4.4.2 Indirect objects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144
4.4.3 Direct objects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144
4.4.4 Distinguishing properties of grammatical relations . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144
4.5 Special cases of predicates and arguments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
4.5.1 The subject requirement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
4.5.2 Nonfinite clauses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150
4.5.3 Small clauses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
4.5.4 Imperatives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152
4.6 Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
4.7 Exercises and problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154

While notions of grammatical categories and constituency are central to our model of syn-
tactic structure, these are not the only foundational concepts that we will rely on to build our
model. In this chapter, we introduce a number of fundamental linguistic relationships that un-
Chapter 4: Some basic linguistic relations 132

derlie syntactic structure, which will lay the foundation for discussions that follow. We first
discuss predication: the division of sentences into predicates and arguments. We then discuss
modifiers, that is, components of sentences that are neither predicates nor arguments. The rest
of the chapter discusses more fine-grained concepts that we use to describe arguments and mod-
ifiers: thematic roles (the semantic role that non-predicates play in sentences) and grammatical
relations, the syntactic implementation of notions like subject and object.

Predicates and arguments 4.1

The first basic linguistic property we address here has to do with one of the necessary components
to make a complete sentence: a predicate, and its arguments. As a very basic introduction,
predication is essentially the attribution of a property to some individual/element (the argument).
The predicates are bracketed in (1), where “dog-ness” is attributed to Lilly in (1a) and happiness
is attributed to Lilly in (1b).

(1) a. Lilly is [ a dog ].

b. Lilly is [ happy ].

So in (1a) the predicate is a dog and the argument is Lilly; in (1b) the predicate is happy and the
argument is Lilly. We need to get more detailed than this (and there are fine-grained notions of
predication that are non-identical to each other), so here we go!

4.1.1 Semantic arguments of predicates

The most obvious factor that determines how vocabulary items combine in sentences has to do
with their meaning, a point most conveniently illustrated with verbs. For the purposes of this sec-
tion (and just this section!) we are going to ignore the role of tense, not because it’s unimportant
but because it adds complications that are independent of our immediate concerns.
Consider the basic sentence in (2):

(2) The children devoured dessert.

We have clear judgments that a devouring event requires both the one doing the consuming, and
the thing being consumed.

(3) a. * Devoured dessert.

b. * The children devoured.

This is a syntactic fact, but it’s also very closely linked with semantic properties of devour. And
we’re going to put our attention on the semantics for the moment, albeit informally. When we
Chapter 4: Some basic linguistic relations 133

think about (2) and (3), there’s a clear sense that a devouring event requires someone or something
to do the devouring, and something to be devoured.
Semanticists (and philosophers of language) use the term proposition to refer to a full
sentence that is a complete thought. More specifically, a proposition is a potential fact: something
that can possibly be true or false. So look at the examples of nouns, noun phrases, prepositional
phrases, and verb phrases in (4)-(6). Notably, it makes no sense to label any of these examples as
“true” or “false”, because none of these are propositions.

(4) a. dog
b. the dog
(5) a. park
b. the park
c. in the park
(6) a. saw the dog
b. saw the dog in the park

However, if we add a subject to the examples in (6), as in (7), then we have full sentences that are
propositions, which can be labeled as either “true” or “false” based on the real world circumstances
they are stated in.

(7) a. Maisha saw the dog

b. Maisha saw the dog in the park

So there is some sense in which the constituents in (4)–(6) are incomplete. And this is the
key intuition that we rely on here in developing clarity about what predicates and arguments
are. We can think of propositions, in part, as describing an event. An event is composed of an
action or a state and the participants in that action/state.1 We use the term predicate to refer
to the part of the event that describes the action, state, or relationship between the participants
in the event and the real world. We use the term argument to refer to the participants in the
event. So in (2) above, the event being described is an act of devouring, i.e., rapidly consuming
something. A devouring event has two arguments—the devour-er (the one doing the consuming),
and the devour-ee (the thing being consumed). Likewise, in our examples in (7), what is being
described is a seeing event. Maisha is the one experiencing the seeing, and the dog is the one
being seen.
Part of having a complete event in a sentence is including all participants in the event. A
devouring event necessarily requires the one doing the devouring and the thing being devoured,
and leaving either out is unacceptable: hence (3). Similarly with a seeing event: it is downright
odd to say something like (8) where the element being perceived is not included.

(8) *? Maisha saw in the park.

Notably, there is not a prespecified number of arguments that all predicates must have. So
while it is odd to say Maisha saw or the children devoured, it is perfectly natural to say Maisha
Chapter 4: Some basic linguistic relations 134

walked or The children laughed. So some predicates require only a single argument, others re-
quires two (or more): we discuss this with more precision in § 4.1.3.
So we can think of a predicate, then, as a syntactic (and semantic) component of a sentence
that is combined with arguments to make a complete event. A complete event, then, is a central
component of a proposition. Specifically, an event needs to be anchored in time and space (via
tense in many languages) to become a complete proposition, but we continue to set aside the
issue of tense for the moment.

4.1.2 Aristotelian versus Fregean predicates

On one way of thinking about the structure of sentences, essentially every clause consists of a
subject and a predicate. The term “predicate” as used here has a different sense than in our earlier
discussion concerning argumenthood; it refers to what remains of a clause when its subject is
removed. On this understanding of a predicate, the subject is bolded in the examples below and
the predicate is underlined.

(9) a. The tabby cat enjoys catnip immensely.

b. They have found that the tabby cat enjoys catnip immensely.
c. My downstairs neighbor suspects that they have found that the tabby cat enjoys
catnip immensely.

For clarity, we can use the term “Aristotelian predicate” for this sense, since the observation that
all sentences consist of a subject and a predicate goes back (at least) to Aristotle (384–322 BCE).
Predication is the relation between a subject and an Aristotelian predicate.
The sense of “predicate” that we used earlier, to refer to a single vocabulary item, is much
more recent and can be attributed to one of the founders of modern logic, the mathematician and
philosopher Gottlob Frege (1848–1925). Accordingly, we can use the term “Fregean predicate” for
this sense. What Frege recognized is that Aristotle’s division of a clause into subject and predicate
is simply the first of a potential series of such bifurcations. Just as it is possible to peel off, as it
were, the subject of a clause, leaving the Aristotelian predicate, it is possible to further peel off
any arguments (and modifiers) contained within the Aristotelian predicate, yielding in the final
instance a single vocabulary item, the Fregean predicate. So in a sentence like the children chased
the dogs with water balloons, the Aristotelian predicate is chased the dogs with water balloons,
whereas the Fregean predicate is chase.2
In (10), the Aristotelian predicate of the largest clause is in italics, and its Fregean predicate
is underlined. As the increasingly complex sentences show, Aristotelian predicates are recursive
categories. Fregean predicates, on the other hand, not being phrases, are not.

(10) a. The tabby cat enjoys catnip immensely.

b. They have found that the tabby cat enjoys catnip immensely.
c. My downstairs neighbor suspects that they have found that the tabby cat enjoys catnip
immensely.
Chapter 4: Some basic linguistic relations 135

4.1.3 Valency
Similar to how it is used in chemistry, the term valency refers to how a component of grammar
combines with other grammatical elements. So for verbs, the term “valency” refers to how many
arguments a verb occurs with in sentences. In principle, a predicate’s valency might completely
determine the syntactic structure that it appears in. The ungrammaticality of the sentences in (11)
would fall out directly from such a system: a one-place predicate like laugh cannot have a distinct
object argument, and a two-place predicate like invite requires the object argument.

(11) a. * Lukas laughed the train. (one-place predicate; superfluous argument)

b. * Andy invited. (two-place predicate; missing theme argument)

The actual situation, however, is more complex. For instance, eat denotes a relation be-
tween eaters and food. It is therefore a two-place predicate, like invite. However, unlike invite,
eat has both a transitive and an intransitive use, as illustrated in (12).

(12) a. Transitive:
The children have eaten their supper.
b. Intransitive:
The children have eaten.

Notice that the semantic properties of eat remain constant in (12). In other words, (12a) and (12b)
are both interpreted as involving the ingestion of food, even though there is no explicit mention
of food in (12b). In view of the mismatch between the semantic and syntactic properties of eat
in sentences like (12b), it is useful to distinguish between semantic and syntactic arguments. As
mentioned earlier, we can think of semantic arguments as central participants in a situation. Syn-
tactic arguments, on the other hand, are constituents that appear in particular syntactic positions
(see Chapter 5 for further discussion). Semantic arguments are typically expressed as syntactic
arguments, but the correspondence between the two is not perfect, as (12b) shows.
We will use the term valency to refer to the number of syntactic arguments that a verb
combines with, and we can then divide verbs into three subcategories as in Table 4.1.

Valency Number of syntactic arguments

Intransitive 1
Transitive 2
Ditransitive 3

Table 4.1: Valency is the number of syntactic arguments a verb takes

Because of mismatches as in (12), it turns out to be quite rare in English for verbs to belong
to just one syntactic subcategory (and it is quite common in the world’s languages to use a single
lexical verb, plus derivational morphology, to create related verbs of different valency). (13)–(15)
shows some two-place verbs besides eat that can be used either transitively or intransitively. The
slashes separate the arguments from the predicate and each other.
Chapter 4: Some basic linguistic relations 136

(13) a. He / interrupted / the meeting. (basically transitive)

b. He / interrupted. (intransitive use)
(14) a. Amy / knits / sweaters. (basically transitive)
b. Amy / knits. (intransitive use)
(15) a. They / are reading / a book. (basically transitive)
b. They / are reading. (intransitive use)

Conversely, certain one-place verbs can be used not only intransitively, but also transi-
tively, as illustrated in (16)–(18). Notice that the verb and its object in the transitive examples
are etymologically related, or cognate. For this reason, the transitive use of one-place verbs as in
(16)–(18) is known as the cognate object construction.

(16) a. Charlie / died. (basically intransitive)

b. Charlie / died / a peaceful death. (transitive use)
(17) a. Maisha / laughed. (basically intransitive)
b. Maisha / laughed / an infectious laugh. (transitive use)
(18) a. Mona Lisa / was smiling. (basically intransitive)
b. Mona Lisa / was smiling / a mysterious smile. (transitive use)

Further, it is possible to use some basically three-place verbs not just ditransitively, but
transitively and even intransitively.

(19) a. We / teach / college students / syntax. (basically ditransitive)

b. We / teach / college students. (transitive use)
c. We / teach / syntax. (transitive use)
d. We / teach. (intransitive use)
(20) a. He / told / me / the whole story. (basically ditransitive)
b. He / told / me. (transitive use)
c. He / told / the whole story. (transitive use)
d. He / better not tell. (intransitive use)

Finally, it is possible to use two-place transitive verbs in ditransitive contexts, essentially

adding an additional object.

(21) a. I / baked / a delicious cake. (basically transitive)

b. I / baked / my friends / a delicious cake. (ditransitive use)
(22) a. She / sang / a lullaby. (basically transitive)
b. She / sang / her baby / a lullaby. (ditransitive use)

Many transitive predicates in Mainstream U.S. English allow for the addition of a recipient of the
event, as in (21) and (22), which is always placed between the verb and the theme object. See § 4.3
for more discussion of what kinds of thematic roles are relevant for syntax.
Chapter 4: Some basic linguistic relations 137

English implements all of these adjustments to valencies with no overt morphological

change to the verb. But in many of the world’s languages, such adjustments are accomplished via
derivational morphology on the verb form. The Swahili example in (23) shows how a transitive
predicate can be changed to a ditransitive predicate (adding a recipient to the sentence) with the
addition of an applicative morpheme to the verb.

(23) a. ku-jibu
inf-answer/respond
‘to answer’
b. ku-jib-i-a
inf-answer-appl-fv
‘to answer for (someone)’

Likewise, a transitive can be made intransitive via the stative suffix.

(24) ku-jib-ik-a
inf-answer-stat-fv
‘to be answerable’

Finally, a causative morpheme can be used to add a second agent to a predicate, with a reading
something like “to make someone else do something”.

(25) ku-jib-iz-a
inf-answer-caus-fv
‘to make (someone) answer’

Many languages have verbal derivational morphology like this, with a lot of interesting
patterns resulting. At present, we simply mention this to illustrate valency of predicates; the
English patterns are attested in many other languages, but often with overt morphology showing
the patterns more explicitly.

Modification 4.2
Events are associated with more or less central participants and properties. The central partici-
pants are the semantic arguments just discussed. Properties of a situation typically taken to be
less central, such as manner, place (location, origin, destination, path), time (point in time, dura-
tion, frequency), reason (cause, purpose), and so on, can be expressed by modifiers. Semantic
arguments are closely associated with specific predicates; modifiers, less so. For examples, not
all situations are associated with themes, so themes are arguments. But situations are all located
in time, so temporal expressions are modifiers.
Chapter 4: Some basic linguistic relations 138

Take Note

Arguments and modifiers both introduce restrictions on the denotation (i.e., the formal
semantic definition) of a predicate, and the relationships of argumenthood and modifica-
tion do not differ in this respect. For instance, the situations denoted by invite Langston
(where Langston is an argument) are a subset of those denoted by invite, just as the sit-
uations denoted by laugh uproariously (where uproariously is a modifier) are a subset of
those denoted by laugh. So there are shared properties between arguments and modifiers
as well, despite the syntactic distinctions between them.

Modifiers of verbs (and verb phrases) are typically adverb phrases or prepositional phrases,
but noun phrases can serve as verbal modifiers as well. In the following examples, the modifier
is in italics, and the verb that it modifies is underlined.

(26) a. Manner:
He read the letter carefully.
b. Location:
We met the students in my office.
c. Origin:
We departed from Bangalore.
d. Destination:
We arrived in Benares.
e. Path:
We followed along the path.
f. Point in time:
They discussed the proposal in the afternoon.
g. Duration:
She kept their books for five years.
h. Frequency:
They read the Times quite often.
i. Cause:
He threw it away out of spite.
j. Purpose:
You should send a message (in order) to warn everyone.

Because of their semantically peripheral character, modifiers are syntactically optional. The con-
verse is not true, however. Not all syntactically optional constituents are modifiers; recall from
(12b) that semantic arguments aren’t always expressed.
Verbs are not the only category that can be modified. For instance, nouns are often modified
by adjective phrases, prepositional phrases, and relative clauses, and contrary to what the name
might suggest, even adverb phrases can modify nouns.
Chapter 4: Some basic linguistic relations 139

(27) a. a very important period

b. a period of great import
c. the car that just turned the corner
d. the instructions below

Moreover, adjective phrases, adverb phrases, and preposition phrases, which typically serve
as modifiers (though they are not restricted to that function), can themselves contain modi-
fiers.

(28) a. very proud of the children

b. surprisingly good to eat
(29) a. almost there
b. right below
(30) a. very much in the dark
b. two feet under the shed

There are cases where it is difficult to tell which constituent is the modifier and which the modi-
fiee. For instance, in an expression like early in the morning, is the adverb modifying the prepo-
sition, as indicated in (31a), or is the prepositional phrase modifying the adverb, as in (31b), or is
either of these possibilities grammatical (that is, is the expression structurally ambiguous)?

(31) a. early in the morning

b. early in the morning

Thematic roles 4.3

This section provides an elementary overview of concepts and terminology related to thematic
roles. We talked about valency of predicates above: laugh is a one-place predicate, and invite
is a two-place predicate. But it is not enough to just count the arguments of a verb, because
the nature of the arguments is different. Thinking about invite for the moment: in the sentence
Maisha invited her classmates, we know that Maisha is the one who initiated the invitation, and her
classmates are the recipients of the invitation, the ones who are invited. If we say Her classmates
invited Maisha the sentence is still grammatical, but the roles of the participants in the event have
switched around: now the classmates are the ones extending the invitation, and Maisha is the
one who received the invitation.
We can see, then, that it is not sufficient to simply describe the number of arguments a
predicate takes: different arguments in a sentence have specific (and predictable) roles in the
event being described. The preverbal argument of invite in the sentences above is the inviter, and
Chapter 4: Some basic linguistic relations 140

the postverbal argument is the invited participant. As it turns out, languages systematically cap-
ture specific kind of roles in events, such that different predicates take arguments representing
different kinds of roles. We call these thematic roles, which enter into our theory in different
ways (we will see in Chapter 7 that these are called 𝜃-roles in some iterations of generative the-
ory). In this section, we outline the different kinds of thematic roles within events that languages
regularly incorporate into their grammar in systematic ways.

4.3.1 Agent, cause, and instrument

Agents are arguments that bring about a state of affairs.3 The line between agents, on the one
hand, and causes or instruments, on the other, can be fuzzy, but agents are (or are perceived to
be) conscious or sentient, in a way that causes or instruments aren’t. Some examples are given
in (32)–(34).

(32) Agent:
a. The lions devoured the wildebeest.
b. The boys caught some fish.
c. My mother wrote me a letter.
(33) Cause:
a. Hurricane-force winds demolished much of the town.
b. An epidemic killed off all of the tomatoes.
c. An economic downturn put thousands of workers out of work.
(34) Instrument:
a. This key opens the door to the main office.
b. They must have used indelible ink.

4.3.2 Experiencer
Experiencers are arguments that undergo a sensory, cognitive, or emotional experience.

(35) Experiencer:
a. The rhesus monkey had never seen snow before.
b. Many people fear snakes.
c. Their resourcefulness struck her as admirable.
Chapter 4: Some basic linguistic relations 141

4.3.3 Recipient
Recipients are arguments that receive something (whether good or bad) in a situation.

(36) Recipient:
a. They gave the workers a raise.
b. I paid my landlord the rent.
c. He spared me his usual sob story.

4.3.4 Location, path, and goal

Locations are points (or regions) in space.

(37) Location:
a. We always eat breakfast in the kitchen.
b. The cork has been bobbing under the bridge for an hour.

Paths connect locations.

(38) Path:
a. Lucky raced down the driveway.
b. The boat passed under the bridge so quickly I missed seeing it.
c. We drove the scenic route.

When locations serve as endpoints of paths, we generally refer to them as goals.

(39) Goal:
a. We traveled to Paris quite a bit in those days.
b. Lucky raced to the edge of the woods.
c. I’d like to send this package to France.

Recipients can also serve as the endpoint of paths, and the distinction between goals and
recipients can be difficult.

(40) I’d like to send this package to my cousin.

Locations and paths can be spatial or temporal.

(41) a. Point in time:

Let’s start the meeting at two.
b. Goal in time:
The meeting will last until two.
Chapter 4: Some basic linguistic relations 142

4.3.5 Measure
Measure (also called amount) arguments express extensions along some dimension (length, du-
ration, cost, and so on).

(42) Measure:
a. They rowed for three days.
b. The book costs ten dollars.

4.3.6 Theme
Finally, the thematic role of theme is something of a catch-all. According to one definition,
“theme” refers to an argument undergoing motion of some sort, including motion in a metaphor-
ical sense, such as a change of state. As is usual in the syntactic literature, we will also use
the term for arguments that are most “affected” in a situation or for arguments that refer to the
content of an experience.

(43) Theme:
a. The lions devoured the wildebeest.
b. This key opens the front door.
c. Hurricane-force winds demolished much of the town.
d. They gave the workers a raise.
e. I’d like to send this package to France.
f. Many people fear snakes.

4.3.7 Intermediate summary

In this section we gave a very brief introduction to thematic roles, and the idea that arguments of
predicates tend to have specific, pre-specified roles that are determined by the predicate.
A good question is why we have described these roles and not others. Real world human
experience is almost impossibly complex, and there are many consistent human experiences that
we might expect to be encoded in grammatical roles, but which are not. (44) imagines kinds of
universal human experiences that one could plausibly think might be encoded in thematic roles
in language, but which are not.

(44) a. Human connections (and dissolution of human connections) are universal experi-
ences. But there are no thematic roles for predicates that specifically describing con-
nection or betRayal.
b. Social approval/honoring (or shaming, in the inverse) are both major tools of social
control (both virtuous and malicious) across societies. But languages don’t have the-
matic roles for predicates that specify something like “to X’s honoR” or “to X’s
shame.”
Chapter 4: Some basic linguistic relations 143

c. Humans have positive and negative valence emotional responses to all kinds of ex-
periences in life. But to our knowledge predicates in human language don’t encode
the notion of “pleasing to X” or “distressing to X” across predicates in any systematic
way.

So why have we reported the thematic roles that we did, and not roles like these? In
principle we might expect (based on human experience) that languages would have grammatical
properties encoding roles like these, too: but on a whole, languages do not. Why not? We don’t
have an easy answer to that question here, though it presumably does tell us something founda-
tional about human cognition that languages consistently encode certain thematic roles but not
concepts that could at least potentially be conceived of as thematic roles. The roles described in
this section are much too common across languages for it to be a coincidence.

Grammatical relations 4.4

This section shows that grammatical relations must be carefully distinguished from thematic
roles. While a thematic role describes the role that a participant plays in an event, a grammatical
relation (sometimes called a grammatical role) describes the role that a phrase plays in a sentence.
In what follows, we illustrate three basic grammatical relations: subject, indirect object, and direct
object.

4.4.1 Subjects
Subjects are ordinarily the only argument to precede the predicate in English. As the examples
in (45) illustrate, subjects can express many different thematic roles.

Word of Caution
Take care not to confuse the grammatical relation of subject with the thematic role of
agent. The existence of passive sentences is a clear indication that the two notions are not
synonymous (compare (45a) with (45h) and also (45i)).

(45) a. The lions devoured the wildebeest. (agent)

b. Hurricane-force winds demolished much of the town. (cause)
c. This key opens the door to the main office. (instrument)
d. The children liked all their Christmas presents. (experiencer)
e. The workers got a raise. (recipient)
f. An unpaved road led up to the shanty. (path)
g. The summit wasn’t attained until years later. (goal)
Chapter 4: Some basic linguistic relations 144

h. The wildebeest was devoured by the lions. (theme)

i. The ball rolled down the hill. (theme)

4.4.2 Indirect objects

Indirect objects occur in conjunction with direct objects, as illustrated in (46).
(46) They gave the workers a raise. (recipient)
Indirect objects in Mainstream U.S. English are thematically very restricted—namely, to recipi-
ents. Nevertheless, there is no one-to-one correspondence between the grammatical relation of
indirect object and the thematic role of recipient. This is because recipients needn’t be indirect
objects, but can also be expressed as subjects, as in (45e).

4.4.3 Direct objects

Direct objects include a verb’s remaining noun phrase arguments. Thematically, they are almost
as flexible as subjects, as shown in (47).
(47) a. You should use this key for the door to the main office. (instrument)
b. The children’s drawings pleased their parents to no end. (experiencer)
c. We drove the scenic route. (path)
d. We reached our hotel after a short subway ride. (goal)
e. The performance lasted two hours. (measure)
f. The lions devoured the wildebeest. (theme)
g. We rolled the ball down the hill. (theme)
h. They gave the workers a raise. (theme)

4.4.4 Distinguishing properties of grammatical relations

Linear order
In many languages, word order correlates to some degree with grammatical relations, in that a
language will place subjects and objects in some typical position. In most of the world’s lan-
guages, subjects precede their predicates, regardless of whether a language is verb-initial (SVO)
or verb-final (SOV). The ordinary position for direct objects is adjacent to the verb—immediately
following it in verb-initial languages (V-DO) and immediately preceding it in verb-final ones
(DO-V). However, indirect objects ordinarily intervene between the verb and the direct object in
verb-initial languages, yielding V-IO-DO order. In verb-final languages, the corresponding order
often is not, as might be expected, the mirror image order. Rather, the indirect object continues
to precedes the direct object, yielding the order IO-DO-V.
These are of course drastic oversimplifications: there are exceptions to these generaliza-
tions, and there is a lot of nuance within languages affecting canonical word orders (as reported
above) vs. non-canonical word orders that are often used for various kinds of discourse functions.
The point, of course, is that in many languages word order has a relatively direct correlation with
grammatical relations.
Chapter 4: Some basic linguistic relations 145

Case
However, in many languages, word order is not a diagnostic property of grammatical roles. In
many such languages, it is often instead a property called case that is a more consistent identifier
of which noun phrases represent which grammatical relation in the sentence. We discuss this in
much more depth in Chapter 9, but we will introduce it briefly here as is relevant for our current
concerns.
Basic aspects of case are already familiar to English speakers, which has case-marking of
nominals in its pronominal system. In English, pronominal subjects of a sentence appear in a
distinct form from pronouns that appear elsewhere.

(48) a. They like her.

b. She likes them.

(49) a. * Them like she.

b. * Her likes they.

We use the term nominative to refer to the case form that sentence subjects appear in,
and accusative to refer to the form that sentence objects appear in. So the nominative forms of
the pronouns above are they and she, and the accusative forms are them and her.4
There are many languages, however, where case-marking is more thorough, appearing
on most or all nominals in the language, and differentiating much more than subjects vs. non-
subjects. The Turkish example in (50) distinguishes the morphological form of direct objects
(accusative case) from indirect objects (dative case)

(50) Mehmet-∅ adam-a elma-lar-ı ver-di

Mehmet-nom man-dat apple-pl-acc give-pst.3sg
‘Mehmet gave the apples to the man.’ (Blake 2004, 1)

Turkish marks nominals with six distinct cases based on their grammatical function in a sentence.
These forms (and their functions) are described by the table in (51).

(51) Case-marking in Turkish (Blake 2004, 2)

Case Grammatical function Form of the word adam- ‘man’
nominative subject adam
accusative direct object adamı
genitive possessor adamın
dative indirect object adama
locative location adamda
ablative source location adamdan

There are two main (distinct) systems of case-marking that appear across human languages:
what is known as nominative-accusative case alignment (as illustrated above), and ergative-
absolutive alignment, which slices up the case-marking pie in a different sort of way (marking
agentive subjects differently from non-agentive subjects, for example). Case-marking in human
Chapter 4: Some basic linguistic relations 146

languages is extraordinarily complex cross-linguistically, so this is only a rudimentary introduc-

tion: the point is that case-marking is one of the ways that grammatical relations are morphosyn-
tactically represented in language.

Verbal inflectional morphology

Another way that morphology encodes grammatical relations in syntax is via agreement and
other kinds of inflectional morphology, where the morphological form of one element changes
based on the properties of some other element. The version of this that most language learners are
relatively familiar with is verbal agreement (i.e., verb conjugation). Inflection on Swahili verbs
appears in the template in (52).

(52) Subject.Agreement - Tense - Object.Agreement - Verb

So in an example like (53a), the plural subject agreement agrees with wazazi ‘parents’, and the
singular object agreement agrees with mtoto ‘child.’ In Swahili it is possible to leave the subject
and object unpronounced as in (53b) so that just the agreement morphemes themselves specify
the relevant grammatical relations of subject and object.

(53) a. Wazazi wa- li- mu- ona mtoto.

parents subj.agR.pl- pst- obj.agR.sg- see child
‘The parents saw the child.’
b. Wa- li- mu- ona.
subj.agR.pl- pst- obj.agR.sg- see
‘They.pl (parents) saw her/him/them.sg (child)
c. * Mu- li- wa- ona.
obj.agR.sg- pst- subj.agR.pl- see

Example (53c) attempts to switch the position of the subject and object agreement, but this is
ungrammatical. As shown in (54), it is possible to switch the singular and plural agreements
(subject agreement for the singular form has a different form), but this switches the grammatical
functions: now the child is the one seeing the parents.

(54) A- li- wa- ona.

subj.agR.sg- pst- obj.agR.pl- see
‘She/he/they.sg (child) saw them.pl (parents).’

So we see that languages may encode grammatical relations in multiple ways: word or-
der, nominal inflection (case), and verbal inflection (agreement). And many languages use more
than one of these strategies, at times marking the same grammatical relation repeatedly, such as
marking subjecthood with word order, nominative case-marking, and subject agreement on the
verb. Each of these strategies is itself a large area of inquiry, but for our purposes we are simply
using these to understand grammatical relations.
Chapter 4: Some basic linguistic relations 147

Special cases of predicates and arguments 4.5

Before concluding our discussion of these foundational concepts we do want to note some specific
special cases relevant to predicates and arguments. We focus our discussion on English at the
moment.

4.5.1 The subject requirement

Evidence for a subject requirement: Expletive it
It is not obvious that predication can be reduced to semantic considerations; this is demonstrated
by a requirement for subjects in sentences that appears to be independent of semantics (we can
call it the subject requirement). We begin by distinguishing between two kinds of it: ordinary
referential it and expletive it. As the name implies, referential it has some referent (for more
on referents and reference, see § 15.1 of Chapter 15). As a result, it can be replaced by a more
complex description of that referent, as in (55).

(55) a. It bit the zebu.

b. The tsetse fly bit the zebu.

Referential it can also receive stress (indicated by underlining) in answers to questions:

(56) a. What bit the zebu?

b. (pointing) It did.

By contrast, expletive it doesn’t refer, so it can’t be replaced by a description:

(57) a. It seems that the manuscript has been found.

b. * The fact seems that the manuscript has been found.

This lack of content of the expletive is also evident in the lack of a content question that replaces
the expletive with what:

(58) * What seems that the manuscript has been found?

Expletive it is unable to receive stress. In fact, as (59) shows, a situation designed to elicit an
answer analogous to (56b) is ungrammatical. So if (59a) is uttered based on some evidence, it’s
not possible to utter (59b) in response in order to invoke the idea that some different sort of
evidence is relevant.

(59) a. It seems that the manuscript has been found.

b. * (pointing) No, IT does.
Chapter 4: Some basic linguistic relations 148

The point is that expletive it in examples like (57a) is a different sort of element from referential
it in examples like (55a).
Returning now to the main thread of the discussion, we note that the italicized that clause
in (60a) functions as the sole syntactic argument of the adjective evident, on a par with the noun
phrase in (60b). (For simplicity, we ignore the copula as semantically vacuous.)

(60) a. That they are corrupt is evident.

b. Their corruption is evident.

An indication of the semantic equivalence of the two expressions is the fact that they can both
serve as a short answer to the question in (61a).

(61) a. What is evident?

b. That they are corrupt.
Their corruption.

(62) shows a syntactic variant of (60a) where the that clause appears at the end of the entire
sentence. The original preverbal position of the that clause is occupied by expletive it.

(62) It is evident that they are corrupt.

Given that the that clause satisfies the semantic requirement of evident for an argument in both
(60a) and (62), the presence of the expletive pronoun in (62) is apparently superfluous. From a
semantic point of view, one might therefore expect it to be optional. But this is not the case, as
the ungrammaticality of (63) shows.

(63) * Is evident that they are corrupt.

The ungrammaticality of (63) leads us to conclude that there exists a purely syntactic well-
formedness condition requiring all clauses to have a subject.

(64) The Subject Requirement:

All clauses must have a subject.

Earlier, we saw that it is possible for arguments to be semantically motivated and yet not
appear overtly in the syntax. Expletive subjects represent roughly the converse of this situation,
being cases where an expression that is not motivated by semantic considerations is nevertheless
obligatory in the syntax.
Chapter 4: Some basic linguistic relations 149

More evidence for the subject requirement: Expletive there

In English, further evidence for the purely syntactic character of the subject requirement comes
from the expletive there construction. As with it, English there comes in two variants: locative
and expletive. The pro-form there has inherently locative meaning in (65); this is evident in the
fact that the adjuncts (right) here and (over) there render (65a) and (65b) self-contradictory and
redundant, respectively.

(65) a. # There comes the train (right) here.

b. ✔ There comes the train (over) there.

It is possible to stress locative there, regardless of its position in a sentence.

Expletive there has no locative meaning, and so both sentences in (66) are completely ac-
ceptable. In contrast to locative there, expletive there can never bear stress.

(66) a. ✔ There is a clean shirt (right) here.

b. ✔ There is a clean shirt (over) there.

Expletive there behaves like an ordinary subject in ways that clause-initial locative there doesn’t.
For instance, it inverts with the verb in direct questions, and it is grammatical in so-called small
clauses (in this instance, selected by despite: see § 4.5.3 for more on small clauses).

(67) a. ✔ Is there a problem?

b. * Is (over) there our train?
(68) a. ✔ despite [there being a problem]
b. * despite (over) [there being our train]

(69) illustrates an ordinary sentence and its expletive there counterpart.

(69) a. Several vexing questions remain.

b. There remain several vexing questions.

Just as expletive it occupies the position that would otherwise be occupied by a clausal subject,
expletive there occupies the position that would otherwise be occupied by a noun phrase subject.
And just as with expletive it, omitting expletive there results in ungrammaticality.

(70) * Remain several vexing questions.

It should be pointed out that not every English sentence has an expletive there counter-
part. Rather, expletive there is subject to a licensing condition (a necessary condition for its
occurrence) that can be stated roughly as in (71).

(71) Licensing condition on expletive there:

For expletive there to be grammatical as the subject of a clause, the (Fregean) predicate of
that same clause must be a verb of existence or coming into existence.
Chapter 4: Some basic linguistic relations 150

In the following examples, the (Fregean) predicate licensing the expletive there is in blue bold-
face.

(72) a. After their military defeat, there arose among the Plains tribes a powerful spiritual
movement.
b. There is a problem.
c. There began a reign of terror.
d. In the end, there emerged a new caudillo.
e. There ensued a period of unrest and lawlessness.
f. There exists an antidote.
g. There has occurred an unfortunate incident.
h. There remains a single course of action.

Predicates that aren’t verbs of (coming into) existence don’t license expletive there. This
is the reason for the ungrammaticality of the following examples; the non-licensing (Fregean)
predicates are underlined in red.

(73) a. * There came more than sixty dignitaries.

b. * There continued the same problem.
c. * There rang the mail carrier.
d. * There sang an impressive choir from Russia.
e. * There strutted a poodle into the room.

4.5.2 Nonfinite clauses

The instances of predication provided so far have all been finite clauses like those in (74) (i.e.
clauses that bear tense).

(74) a. He laughed uproariously.

b. It will seem that they won the game.
c. There is a problem.

Nonfinite clauses like those in (75) are also instances of predication; the clauses at issue are set
off by brackets.

(75) a. We expected [ him to laugh uproariously ].

b. We expected [ it to seem that they won the game ].
c. We expected [ there to be a problem ].

At first glance, it might seem preferable to treat the italicized noun phrases in (76) as objects
of expected, rather than as subjects of the embedded nonfinite clause the way we have done.
However, such an approach faces at least two difficulties. First, the relation between the italicized
and underlined constituents in the all of nonfinite embedded clauses in (75) is the same as the
relation between the undoubted subjects and predicates of the finite clauses in (74) and their
embedded counterparts in (76).
Chapter 4: Some basic linguistic relations 151

(76) a. We expected that [ he would laugh uproariously ].

b. We expected that [ it would seem that they won the game ].
c. We expected that [ there would be a problem ].

Second, in (75a), the thematic relation of agent that the noun phrase him bears to laugh is exactly
the same as that between the subject he and laughed in (74a) and (76a). If him were the object of
expected rather than the subject of the nonfinite clause, that fact would not be captured directly.
Moreover, we would be forced to admit the otherwise unprecedented pairing of the grammatical
relation of direct object with the thematic role of agent (see § 4.3 and § 4.4).

4.5.3 Small clauses

Because of the parallel between nonfinite and finite embedded clauses illustrated in (75) and (76),
it makes sense to assign to in to-infinitive clauses to the same category as modals (see Chapter 5,
§ 5.2.2). There also exist instances of predication without any inflection whatsoever (inflection
being the marking of tense and agreement on the clause, normally on the verb). These are called
small clauses (the idea behind the name is that the absence of inflection makes them smaller
than an ordinary clause).5 (77)–(80) provide some examples; the captions indicate the syntactic
category of the small clause’s (Aristotelian) predicate, which is underlined.

(77) Adjective phrase:

a. We consider [ the proposed solution completely inadequate ].
b. They proved [ the theory false ].
(78) Noun phrase:
a. They called [ the actor a traitor ].
b. I consider [ Mark Judy’s closest collaborator ].
(79) Prepositional phrase:
a. They made [ him into a star ].
b. I want [ everyone off the boat ].
(80) Verb phrase:
a. God let [ there be light ]. (bare verb)
b. I hear [ the cat scratching at the door ]. (gerund)

Small clauses are typically arguments of verbs, but they can also be arguments of (certain)
prepositions—notably with—as illustrated in (81).

(81) a. Adjective phrase:

With the weather much less turbulent, flights were able to resume for the first time in
days.
b. Noun phrase:
With her husband an airline industry lobbyist, the senator’s support for the bailout
was hardly surprising.
Chapter 4: Some basic linguistic relations 152

c. Prepositional phrase:
With all three of their kids in college, their budget is pretty tight.
d. Verb phrase (gerund):
With the parade passing right in front of her house, Jenny could not have asked for a
better view of it.

Small clauses will play a significant role in some of our theorizing in Chapter 7, so we will see
these come back eventually.

4.5.4 Imperatives
Imperative sentences like (82) appear to lack a subject.

(82) Come over here.

There is reason to believe, however, that they contain a second-person subject comparable to the
pronoun you except that it is silent (the “you understood” of traditional grammar). For one thing,
(82) has a variant in (83) where the subject is explicitly expressed.

(83) You come over here.

Another reason to assume that all imperatives contain a silent, yet syntactically active subject is
that the grammaticality pattern in (84), where the subject is overt, has an exact counterpart in
(85).

(84) a. You shave { yourself, yourselves }.

b. * You shave you.
c. * You shave themselves.
(85) a. Shave { yourself, yourselves }.
b. * Shave you.
c. * Shave themselves.

New Empirical Observations

▶ expletive it and there

▶ small clauses

Components of the Theoretical Model

▶ predicates
▶ arguments
 Chapter 4: Some basic linguistic relations 153

▶ thematic roles

▷ agent ▷ recipient/benefactive ▷ measure

▷ cause ▷ location ▷ theme
▷ instrument ▷ path
▷ experiencer ▷ goal

▶ grammatical functions
▷ subject
▷ direct object
▷ indirect object
▶ Subject Requirement

Notes 4.6
1. Formal semanticists reserve the term event/eventive for actions, and use the term eventuality to collectively refer to
actions and states together. While more precise, the term eventuality is a little less transparent to non-semanticists,
so with apologies to those folks we will use the term event here to describe eventualities.

2. Fruitful as Frege’s analytic insight is, we should not let it obscure the key difference between subjects and other
constituents of a clause: namely, that constituents contained within an Aristotelian predicate must be licensed
by semantic considerations (in other words, these constituents are present because of semantic considerations),
whereas the subject, which is external to the Aristotelian predicate and combines with it, is required independently
of semantic considerations.

3. Here and in the rest of the section, our usage is a bit sloppy. Specifically, we ignore the distinction between linguistic
expressions and the discourse entities that they refer to (for some discussion, see § 15.1 of Chapter 15). For instance,
in (32a), the agent of the devouring is a group of live animals, not the two words referring to them). So a more precise
formulation would be something like “We use the term ‘agent’ to refer to linguistic expressions that (in turn) refer to
entities that bring about a state of affairs”. This mild imprecision is hopefully tolerable in service of a more natural
exposition.

4. In fact, those forms are probably default forms rather than specifically accusative forms, since they are used much
more broadly than just accusative contexts.

5. Small clauses are exceptional in another regard: they are a further instance of constituents where the constituenthood
tests of Chapter 3 yield false negative results (at least for most speakers).

(i) a. What do you like?

b. ⁇ My coffee hot.
Chapter 4: Some basic linguistic relations 154

Exercises and problems 4.7

Exercise 4.1: Practice with predicates and arguments
For each sentence given in (1), identify the predicate and the arguments of the predicate. If doing
the exercise by hand, circle the predicates and underline the arguments. Otherwise mark/identify
them however is consistent and convenient.
(1) a. The children chased butterflies yesterday in the park.
b. The footballers practiced their free kick routines the day before the game.
c. The announcers narrated the events of the game.
d. The dog slept peacefully in his bed.
e. The student read the entire textbook before the semester started.
f. Professors assign their students too much homework.
g. AI doesn’t do syntax assignments well. Yet.
h. It is raining heavily outside.
i. The rain is falling gently.
j. Link saves the kingdom of Hyrule every time.
k. I paid the cashier $7 for this sandwich.
l. I bet my friend $100 that Liverpool will win the title this year.

Exercise 4.2: Practice with arguments and modifiers (adjuncts)

For each sentence in (1), identify which constituents are arguments of the predicate (which is
bolded) and which constituents are modifiers/adjuncts. Some constituents of the sentence in-
clude predicates of their own, but we focus on the predicates/arguments/modifiers of the main
clause.
(1) a. The defender tackled the striker forcefully before she ran past.
b. The defender unsurprisingly received a yellow card for her hard tackle.
c. The referee gave the defender a yellow card for her hard tackle.
d. I made tacos for dinner last night.
e. The broth simmered on the stove for hours.
f. The line chef skillfully chopped the onions quickly with a large knife.
g. I would kill for a cheesesteak from South Philly.
h. I watch videos about cooking more than I actually cook.
i. The rain poured down all night.
j. We arrived at class early today.
k. Alex said they are leaving class early today.
l. Lilly always snores loudly.
Chapter 4: Some basic linguistic relations 155

Exercise 4.3: Practice with thematic roles

For each of the underlined arguments, identify the thematic role that it holds for the (bolded)
predicate it is occurring with.

(1) a. My mom sent me the recipe for chicken curry that I had been asking for.
b. I miss soft pretzels from Philly.
c. My coffee spilled on my shirt this morning.
d. The goalkeeper almost dropped the ball after being hit.
e. The midfielder handed her coach the ball.
f. The referee placed the ball on the penalty spot.
g. The final score of the match shocked me, to be honest.
h. We could hear the crowd from outside the stadium.
i. The wind opened the door.
j. The children go to school every morning.
k. I send my kiddo to school every morning.
l. My fingerprint unlocks my computer.
m. The pandemic inflicted hardship and suffering on many people.

Exercise 4.4: Clarifying core concepts

A. In your own words, discuss the difference between “modify” and “predicate”. Feel free to
use illustrative examples, but be as concise as you can.
B. This part of the exercise focuses on a fundamental distinction in linguistics—that of form vs.
function. In everyday usage, the term “modifier”, which refers to any expression that adds
information about some other expression, is sometimes used interchangeably with the term
“adjective”. By contrast, linguists distinguish carefully between the two terms and define
adjectives on the basis of morphosyntactic form rather than on the basis of function (see
Chapter 2, § 2.3.3 for details). Assuming the linguistic definition of “adjective”, give an
example of your own of 1) an adjective (or adjective phrase) that is not a modifier, and 2) a
modifier that is not an adjective.
C. This part of the exercise is intended to help you get a better feel for the concept of “small
clause”, which many students find difficult. Make up some example sentences that you
think might contain small clauses, but that you’re not sure about. Clearly indicate the
string that you think is the small clause.
Chapter 4: Some basic linguistic relations 156

Exercise 4.5: Form versus function

A. This part of the exercise focuses on a fundamental distinction in linguistics—that of form vs.
function. The function of modification is typically expressed by constituents of a certain
form—namely, adverb phrases or prepositional phrases. But modifiers can also take the
form of noun phrases, as in (1).

(1) Manner: They solved the problem another way.

Provide examples of noun phrase modifiers for the other types of modification illustrated
in the chapter in (26), repeated for convenience as (2). (This is not necessarily possible for
every type.)

(2) a. Manner:
He read the letter carefully.
b. Location:
We met the students in my office.
c. Origin:
We departed from Bangalore.
d. Destination:
We arrived in Benares.
e. Path:
We followed along the path.
f. Point in time:
They discussed the proposal in the afternoon.
g. Duration:
She kept their books for five years.
h. Frequency:
They read the Times quite often.
i. Cause:
He threw it away out of spite.
j. Purpose:
You should send a message (in order) to warn everyone.

B. Here are some questions concerning the relationship between thematic roles and gram-
matical functions.
• Is there a one-to-one relations between thematic roles and grammatical relations?
• Are there any thematic roles that must be expressed by a particular grammatical re-
lation? For instance, are agents invariably expressed as subjects?
• Conversely, are there grammatical relations that are restricted to expressing a partic-
ular thematic role? For instance, do direct objects always express themes?
Chapter 4: Some basic linguistic relations 157

• Are there typical or common mappings between thematic roles and grammatical re-
lations?
• Can you imagine a prepositional phrase expressing the thematic role of theme (not
necessarily in English)?

Problem 4.1: Grammatical functions across languages

In this exercise you will compare Mainstream U.S. English, Japanese (Japonic, Japan), Mandarin
Chinese (Sinitic, China), Korean (Koreanic, Korea), and Tiriki (a Bantu language of the Luyia
subgroup spoken in western Kenya). Grammatical functions are represented similarly between
the languages in some ways, and differently in others. Instructors may specify whether students
should work on each language included here, or only selected languages.
A. For each language: how are the grammatical functions of subject and object encoded in the
language? List all grammatical correlates of those grammatical functions that you note.
B. Discuss the similarities and differences in representing the grammatical functions of subject
and object between the languages.

Background Info

Tiriki nominals are all designated with some noun class, which is annotated with a cardi-
nal number (1, 2, 3, etc). You don’t need to understand details about noun class except that
noun classes exist, and different categories in Tiriki inflect (agree) based on noun class.
All verbs in Tiriki necessarily end in a vowel—sometimes this vowel is part of another af-
fix, at other times we simply gloss it as fv (final vowel). pass = passive; agR= agreement;
pRon= pronoun. Some details about the phonological processes in preverbal verb length
are adjusted here in order to normalize the data for the purposes of the pedagogical exer-
cise.
For Japanese, Korean, and Chinese, pst indicates past tense, decl declarative mood, and
pfv perfective aspect (you may safely ignore tense-aspect-mood for this exercise). dim in-
dicates ‘diminutive’ (here, it’s a prefix attached to a name to show affection or familiarity)
and may also be safely ignored. The functions of ga, o, i/Ka, (l)ul, and ba are for you to
discover! Finally, the keen-eyed student may notice some verb-stem allomorphy, but they
and their classmates should feel free to ignore it.

English
(1) a. The window breaks.
b. The ball breaks the window.
c. The balls break the window.
d. The window was broken.

(2) a. She greeted them.

b. They greeted her.
Chapter 4: Some basic linguistic relations 158

c. *Them greeted she.

d. *Her greeted they.
e. They were greeted.
f. *Them were greeted.

Tiriki
(3) a. I-nyungu y-a-tikha.
9-pot 9agR-pst-be.broken
‘The pot broke.’
b. Tsi-nyungu tsy-a-tikha.
10-pots 10agR-pst-be.broken
‘The pots broke.’
c. Mw-ana y-a-rhana i-nyungu.
1-child 1agR-pst-break 9-pot
‘The child broke the pot.’
d. Va-na va-a-rhana i-nyungu.
2-children 2agR-pst-break 9-pot
‘The children broke the pot.’
e. I-nyungu y-a-rhan-w-a.
9-pot 9agR-pst-break-pass-fv
‘The pot was broken.’
f. Tsi-nyungu tsy-a-rhan-w-a.
10-pots 10agR-pst-break-pass-fv
‘The pots were broken.’

Each of the examples in (4) are different ways of saying the same thing. As a reminder, third
person singular human noun phrases are class 1 in Tiriki; third person plural human noun phrases
are class 2. Third person is not differentiated by human gender in Tiriki, but we translate examples
only as feminine here for readability (rather than listing all the options).

(4) a. Y-a-va-shelits-a.
1agR-pst-2agR-greet-fv
‘She greeted them.’ (*They greeted her.)
b. Ye y-a-va-shelits-a.
1pRon 1agR-pst-2agR-greet-fv
‘She greeted them.’ (*They greeted her.)
c. Ye y-a-shelits-a vo.
1pRon 1agR-pst-greet-fv 2pRon
‘She greeted them.’ (*They greeted her.)

(5) a. Va-a-shelits-w-a.
2agR-pst-greet-pass-fv
‘They were greeted.’
Chapter 4: Some basic linguistic relations 159

b. Vo va-a-shelits-w-a.
2pRon 2agR-pst-greet-pass-fv
‘They were greeted.’

Each of the examples in (6) are different ways of saying the same thing. As a reminder, third
person singular human noun phrases are class 1 in Tiriki; third person plural human noun phrases
are class 2. Third person is not differentiated by human gender in Tiriki, but we translate examples
only as feminine here for readability (rather than listing all the options).

(6) a. Va-a-mu-shelits-a.
2agR-pst-1agR-greet-fv
‘They greeted her.’ (*She greeted them.)
b. Vo va-a-mu-shelitsa.
2pRon 2agR-pst-1agR-greet-fv
‘They greeted her.’ (*She greeted them.)
c. Vo va-a-shelits-a ye.
2pRon 2agR-pst-greet-fv 1pRon
‘They greeted her.’ (*She greeted them.)

(7) a. Y-a-shelits-w-a.
1agR-pst-greet-pass-fv
‘She was greeted.’
b. Ye y-a-shelits-w-a.
1pRon 1agR-pst-greet-pass-fv
‘She was greeted.’

Japanese
(8) a. 窓が 開いた。
Mado-ga ai-ta.
window-ga open-pst
‘The window opened.’
b. すべての 窓が 開いた。
Subeteno mado-ga ai-ta.
all window-ga open-pst
‘All the windows opened.’
c. 子供が 窓を 開けた。
Kodomo-ga mado-o ake-ta.
child-ga window-o open-pst
‘The child opened the window.’
d. 子供たちが 窓を 開けた。
Kodomo-tachi-ga mado-o ake-ta.
child-pl-ga window-o open-pst
‘The children opened the window.’
Chapter 4: Some basic linguistic relations 160

e. 窓が 開けられた。
Mado-ga ake-rare-ta.
window-ga open-pass-pst
‘The window was opened.’
f. すべての 窓が 開けられた。
Subeteno mado-ga ake-rare-ta.
all window-ga open-pass-pst
‘All the windows were opened.’
g. # 窓たちが 開いた。
Mado-tachi-ga ai-ta.
window-pl-ga open-pst
‘The windows opened.’ (sounds like a fairytale with living windows)
h. # 窓たちが 開けられた。
Mado-tachi-ga ake-rare-ta.
window-pl-ga open-pass-pst
‘The windows were opened.’ (sounds like a fairytale with living windows)

Each of the examples in (9) are different ways of saying the same thing.

(9) a. 彼女が 彼を 起こした。

Kanojo-ga kare-o okoshi-ta.
she-ga he-o wake.up-pst
‘She woke him up.’
b. 彼を 彼女が 起こした。
Kare-o kanojo-ga okoshi-ta.
he-o she-ga wake.up-pst
‘She woke him up.’

Each of the examples in (10) are different ways of saying the same thing.

(10) a. 彼が 彼女を 起こした。

Kare-ga kanojo-o okoshi-ta.
he-ga she-o wake.up-pst
‘He woke her up.’
b. 彼女を 彼が 起こした。
Kanojo-o kare-ga okoshi-ta.
she-o he-ga wake.up-pst
‘He woke her up.’
Chapter 4: Some basic linguistic relations 161

Korean
(11) a. 물이 끓었다.
Mul-i kkulh-ess-ta.
water-i/Ka boil-pst-decl
‘The water boiled.’
b. 성희가 물을 끓였다.
Senghuy-ka mul-ul kkulhy-ess-ta.
Sunghee-i/Ka water-(l)ul boil-pst-decl
‘Sunghee boiled the water.’
c. 물을 성희가 끓였다.
Mul-ul Senghuy-ka kkulhy-ess-ta.
water-(l)ul Sunghee-i/Ka boil-pst-decl
‘Sunghee boiled the water.’
d. # 물이 성희를 끓였다.
Mul-i Senghuy-lul kkulhy-ess-ta.
water-i/Ka Sunghee-(l)ul boil-pst-decl
‘#The water boiled Sunghee.’

Each of the examples in (12) are different ways of saying the same thing.

(12) a. 그녀가 그들을 그리워했다.

Kunye-ka ku-dul-ul kuliwehayss-ta.
she-i/Ka 3-pl-(l)ul miss-pst-decl
‘She missed them.’
b. 그들을 그녀가 그리워했다.
Ku-dul-ul kunye-ka kuliwehayss-ta.
3-pl-(l)ul she-Ka miss-pst-decl
‘They missed her.’

Each of the examples in (13) are different ways of saying the same thing.

(13) a. 그들이 그녀를 그리워했다.

Ku-dul-i kunye-lul kuliwehayss-ta.
3-pl-i/Ka she-(l)ul miss-pst-decl
‘They missed her.’
b. 그녀를 그들이 그리워했다.
Kunye-lul ku-dul-i kuliwehayss-ta.
she-(l)ul 3-pl-i/Ka miss-pst-decl
‘They missed her.’
Chapter 4: Some basic linguistic relations 162

Mandarin Chinese
(14) a. 实分析作业 终于 写完了。
Shí-fēnxī-zuòyè zhōngyú xiě-wán-le.
real-analysis-homework finally write-done-pfv
‘The real analysis homework is finally finished.’
b. 小明 终于 写完了 实分析作业。
Xiǎo-Míng zhōngyú xiě-wán-le shí-fēnxī-zuòyè.
dim-Ming finally write-done-pfv real-analysis-homework
‘Ming finally finished the real analysis homework.’
c. 小明 终于 把 实分析作业 写完了。
Xiǎo-Mínǧ zhōngyú bǎ shí-fēnxī-zuòyè xiě-wán-le.
dim-Ming finally ba real-analysis-homework write-done-pfv
‘Ming finally finished the real analysis homework.’
d. # 实分析作业 终于 写完了 小明。
Shí-fēnxī-zuòyè zhōngyú xiě-wán-le Xiǎo-Míng.
real-analysis-homework finally write-done-pfv dim-Ming
‘#The real analysis homework finally finished Ming.’ (nonsensical or humorous)
e. # 实分析作业 终于 把 小明 写完了。
Shí-fēnxī-zuòyè zhōngyú bǎ Xiǎo-Míng xiě-wán-le.
real-analysis-homework finally ba dim-Ming write-done-pfv
‘#The real analysis homework finally finished Ming.’ (nonsensical or humorous)

Each of the examples in (15) are different ways of saying the same thing. Third person is not
differentiated by human gender in spoken Mandarin, but we translate examples only as feminine
here for readability (rather than listing all the options). cos indicates a sentence-final change-of-
state particle (but you may ignore it).

(15) a. 她 带 他们 去 看 电影 了。
Tā dài tā-men qù kàn diànyǐng le.
3sg take 3-pl go see movie cos
‘She took them to go see a movie.’ (*They took her to watch a movie.)
b. 她 把 他们 带 去 看 电影 了。
Tā bǎ tā-men dài qù kàn diànyǐng le.
3sg ba 3-pl take go see movie cos
‘She took them to go see a movie.’ (*They took her to watch a movie.)

(16) a. 他们 被 带 去 看 电影 了。
Tā-men bèi dài qù kàn diànyǐng le.
3-pl pass take go see movie cos
‘They were taken to go see a movie.’
b. * 他们 被 把 带 去 看 电影 了。
Tā-men bèi bǎ dài qù kàn diànyǐng le.
3-pl pass ba take go see movie cos
‘They were taken to go see a movie.’
Chapter 4: Some basic linguistic relations 163

c. ?* 他们 把 被 带 去 看 电影 了。
Tā-men bǎ bèi dài qù kàn diànyǐng le.
3-pl ba pass take go see movie cos
Intended: ‘They were taken to go see a movie.’
d. * 把 他们 被 带 去 看 电影 了。
Bǎ tā-men bèi dài qù kàn diànyǐng le.
ba 3-pl pass take go see movie cos
Intended: ‘They were taken to go see a movie.’

Each of the examples in (17) are different ways of saying the same thing. Third person is not
differentiated by human gender in spoken Mandarin, but we translate examples only as feminine
here for readability (rather than listing all the options). cos indicates a sentence-final change-of-
state particle (but you may ignore it).

(17) a. 他们 带 她 去 看 电影 了。
Tā-men dài tā qù kàn diànyǐng le.
3-pl take 3sg go see movie cos
‘They took her to go see a movie.’ (*She took them to watch a movie.)
b. 他们 把 她 带 去 看 电影 了。
Tā̄-men bǎ ta dài qù kàn diànyǐng le.
3-pl ba 3sg take go see movie cos
‘They took her to go see a movie.’ (*She took them to watch a movie.)

(18) a. 她 被 带 去 看 电影 了。
Tā bèi dài qù kàn diànyǐng le.
3sg pass take go see movie cos
‘She was taken to go see a movie.’

Problem 4.2: Adjusting thematic structure of predicates in Tiriki

Tiriki is a Bantu language of the Luyia subgroup that is spoken in the western parts of Kenya. Like
many Bantu languages, predicates can be adjusted in terms of what thematic roles are referenced
using derivational morphology on the verb form. Your task is to identify what function each mor-
pheme accomplish which functions in Tiriki. The relevant morphemes are glossed with question
marks in the examples below. You don’t have to explain any other aspects of the morphology of
Tiriki.
Background: Tiriki has a robust noun class system: noun classes are glossed with cardinal num-
bers (1, 2, 3, 4, etc). You don’t have to explain anything about noun classes, though they do show
what is agreeing with that, which is sometimes helpful to know. sm = subject marker (i.e., sub-
ject agreement on verbs), sm glosses are accompanied with a noun class gloss based on what the
noun class is of the subject that they agree in; pst = past tense; pfv = perfective aspect (translated
similar to past tense); all verbs in Tiriki necessarily end in a vowel—sometimes this vowel is part
of another affix, at other times we simply gloss it as fv (final vowel).
Chapter 4: Some basic linguistic relations 164

(1) a. Va-cheni va-rerh-i vi-hanwa.

2-guests 2sm-bring-pst 2-gifts
‘The guests brought gifts.’
b. Va-cheni va-rerh-er-e va-na vi-hanwa.
2-guests 2sm-bring-?-pst 2-children 2-gifts
‘The guests brought the children gifts.’
c. Va-na va-rerh-er-w-e vi-hanwa.
2-children 2sm-bring-?-?-pst 2-gifts
‘The children were brought gifts.’

(2) a. Shi-kombe shi-itsul-e.

7-cup 7sm-fill-pst
‘The cup is filled.’
b. Mu-hinzili y-itsul-its-e shi-kombe.
1-server 1sm-fill-?-pst 7-cup
‘The server filled the cup.’
c. Shi-kombe shi-itsul-its-w-e na mu-hinzili.
7-cup 7sm-fill-?-?-pst by 1-server
‘The cup was filled by the server.’

(3) a. Kukhu y-a-fung-a mu-lyango.

1Grandma 1sm-pst-close-fv 3-door
‘Grandma closed the door.’
b. Mu-lyango kw-a-fung-ikh-a (*na kukhu).
3-door 3sm-pst-close-?-fv (*by 1grandma)
‘The door closed.’
c. Mu-lyango kw-a-fung-w-a na kukhu.
3-door 3sm-pst-close-?-fv by 1grandma
‘The door was closed by grandma.’

(4) a. Mw-ana a-khalak-e vi-tungu.

1-child 1sm-cut-pst 8-onions
‘The child cut the onions.’
b. Mw-ana a-khalak-il-e mama vi-tungu.
1-child 1sm-cut-?-pst 8-onions
‘The child cut the onions for Mama.’
c. Mama a-khalak-il-w-e vi-tungu na mw-ana.
1mama 1sm-cut-?-?-pst 8-onions by 1-child
‘Mama had onions cut for her by the child.’

(5) a. Azangu a-kalukh-e i-ngo.

1Azangu 1sm-return-pst 9-home
‘Azangu returned home.’
Chapter 4: Some basic linguistic relations 165

b. Azangu a-kalukh-il-e va-cheni i-ngo.

1Azangu 1sm-return-?-pst 2-guests 9-home
‘Azangu returned home for the guests.’

(6) a. Mu-tekhi a-shukhanyiny-e mu-nyu.

1-cook 1sm-stir-pst 3-soup
‘The cook stirred the soup.’
b. Mu-tekhi a-shukhany-il-e mu-nyu shi-chiko.
1-cook 1sm-stir-?-pst 3-soup 7-spoon
‘The cook stirred the soup with a spoon.’
c. Mu-nyu khu-shukhany-il-w-e shi-chiko na mu-tekhi.
3-soup 3sm-stir-?-?-pst 7-spoon by 1-cook
‘The soup was stirred with a spoon by the cook.’

(7) a. Mu-tekhi y-a-samb-a ma-tuma.

1-cook 1sm-pst-roast-fv 6-maize
‘The cook roasted the maize.’
b. Ma-tuma ka-a-samb-ikh-a (*na mu-tekhi).
6-maize 6sm-pst-roast-?-fv (*by 1-cook)
‘The maize roasted.’
c. Ma-tuma ka-a-samb-w-a na mu-tekhi.
6-maize 6sm-pst-roast-?-fv by 1-cook
‘The maize was roasted by the cook.’

(8) a. I-simbwa i-vukh-i.

9-dog 9sm-wake.up-pst
‘The dog woke up.’
b. Li-yoko li-vukh-its-e i-simbwa.
5-loud.noise 5sm-wake.up-?-pst 9-dog
‘The loud noise woke up the dog.’
c. I-simbwa i-vukh-its-w-e na li-yoko.
9-dog 9sm-wake.up-?-?-pst by 5-loud.noise
‘The dog was woken by the loud noise.’

(9) a. V-ivuli va-chot-i.

2-parents 2sm-be.tired-pst
‘The parents were tired.’
b. Va-na va-chot-its-e v-ivuli.
2-children 2sm-be.tired-?-pst 2-parents
‘The children tired the parents.’
c. V-ivuli va-chot-its-w-e na va-na.
2-parents 2sm-be.tired-?-?-pst by 2-children
‘The parents are tired by the children.’
Chapter 4: Some basic linguistic relations 166

(10) a. Mu-hinzili a-khalak-e lu-pao.

1-worker 1sm-chop-pst 11-wood
‘The worker chopped the wood.’
b. Mu-hinzili a-khalak-il-e lu-pao i-haywa.
1-worker 1sm-chop-?-pst 11-wood 9-axe
‘The worker chopped the wood with an axe.’
c. Lu-pao lu-khalak-il-w-e i-haywa na mu-hinzili.
11-wood 11sm-chop-?-?-pst 9-axe by 1-worker
‘The wood was chopped with an axe by the worker.’

(11) a. Vi-vuli va-som-i vi-tapu.

2-parents 2sm-read-pst 8-books
‘The parents read the books.’
b. Vi-vuli va-som-el-e va-na vi-tapu.
2-parents 2sm-read-?-pst 2-children 8-books
‘The parents read the children the books.’
c. Va-na va-som-el-w-e vi-tapu na vi-vuli.
2-children 2sm-read-?-?-pst 8-books 2-children by 2-parents
‘The children were read books by the parents.’

(12) a. Mu-tekhi y-a-khalak-a vi-tungu.

1-cook 1sm-pst-cut-fv 8-onions
‘The cook cut the onions.’
b. Vi-tungu vy-a-khal-ikh-a (*na mu-tekhi).
8-onions 8sm-pst-cut-?-fv (*by 1-cook)
‘The onions (got) cut.’
c. Vi-tungu vy-a-khal-w-a na mu-tekhi.
8-onions 8sm-pst-cut-?-fv by 1-cook
‘The onions were cut by the cook.’

Problem 4.3: Identifying structural differences

Using concepts introduced in this chapter, discuss the syntactic difference(s) between the two
sentences in (1).

(1) a. Winston considered the judges careful.

b. Winston considered the judges carefully.

(The sentences come from this source, but the discussion there of (1a) is confusing. Thanks to
Rosemary George for tracking down the archived link.)
Chapter 4: Some basic linguistic relations 167

Problem 4.4: Ambiguity

A. The following headlines each have an intended reading and (possibly more than one) un-
intended humorous reading. Using the concepts introduced in this chapter, explain the
differences between the intended and unintended readings.

(1) a. Greeks Fine Hookers

b. Lawmen from Mexico Barbecue Guests
c. Lawyers Give Poor Free Legal Advice
d. Lung Cancer in Women Mushrooms
(2) Q: What did the Zen master say to the guy at the hot dog stand?
A: Make me one with everything.
(3) The comedian and civil rights activist Dick Gregory tells of walking up to a lunch
counter in Mississippi during the days of racial segregation. The waitress said to
him, “We don’t serve colored people”. “That’s fine,” he replied, “I don’t eat colored
people. I’d like a piece of chicken.”

B. Recall Exercise 1.5. (Re)formulate (and possibly improve/generalize) your answer to Part B
in terms of the concepts introduced in this chapter.

Problem 4.5: Lubukusu locative inversion

Background: Lubukusu is canonically an SVO language, so (2) displays the canonical (i.e., usual,
regular) word order. It has noun classes, and lots of agreement. This puzzle is specifically about
how verbs inflect for noun class in a particular grammatical construction known as locative
inversion, where a locative phrase appears in preverbal position and the subject is in a non-
canonical postverbal position. English has similar patterns; (1a) shows canonical English word
order, and (1b) shows a locative inversion construction.

(1) a. The ball rolled down the hill.

b. Down the hill rolled the ball.

Instructions: There are two different kinds of locative inversion in this Lubukusu data set. Iden-
tify what the two patterns are from the “basic examples” below. Then, consider the variety of
verbs in the locative inversion constructions in the next section. What patterns do you notice?
What is the generalization with respect to which version of locative inversion is available with
which verbs?
Glosses: SM = subject marker, i.e., verbal agreement with the subject, pRf = perfect tense, pRs =
present tense, loc = locative
Notes:
▶ Lubukusu is a tone language, but tone is not relevant for these patterns and is not marked.
▶ The numbers on nouns and agreement morphemes signal noun class. For the purposes of
this assignment, they are mainly helpful to see what is agreeing with what.
Chapter 4: Some basic linguistic relations 168

▶ Locative phrases (i.e., locations) are formed by taking some noun and replacing the first
noun class marker with a locative class marker. The locative noun classes are 16, 17, 18.
Basic examples

(2) Ku-mu-saala kw-a-kwa mu-mu-siiru.

3-3-tree 3sm-pst-fall 18-3-forest
‘A tree fell in the forest.’
(3) Mu-mu-siiru kw-a-kwa-mo ku-mu-saala.
18-3-forest 3sm-pst-fall-18loc 3-3-tree
‘In the forest fell a tree.’
(4) Mu-mu-siiru mw-a-kwa-mo ku-mu-saala.
18-3-forest 18sm-pst-fall-18loc 3-3-tree
‘In the forest fell a tree.’
(5) Ku-m-pira kw-a-biringikha khu-si-kulu.
3-3-ball 3sm-pst-roll 17-7-hill
‘The ball rolled on/down the hill.’
(6) Khu-si-kulu kw-a-biringikha-kho ku-m-pira.
17-7-hill 3sm-pst-roll-17loc 3-3-ball
‘On/down the hill rolled the ball.’
(7) Khu-si-kulu khw-a-biringikha-kho ku-m-pira.
17-7-hill 17sm-pst-roll-17loc 3-3-ball
‘On the hill rolled the ball.’

Examples using different verbs

(8) a. Ba-ba-ana b-ola e-engo.

2-2-child 2sm-pst.arrive 9-home
‘The children arrived home.’
b. Mu-nju b-ola-mo ba-ba-ana.
18-home 2sm-pst.arrive-18loc 2-2-child
‘Inside/at home arrived the children.’
c. Mu-nju mw-ola-mo ba-ba-ana.
18-home 18sm-pst.arrive-18loc 2-2-child
‘Inside/at home arrived the children.’

(9) a. E-nyuni y-embela khu-mu-saala.

9-bird 9sm-sang 17-3-tree
‘A bird sang on the tree.’
b. Khu-mu-saala y-embela-kho e-nyuni.
17-3-tree 9sm-sang-17loc 9-bird
‘On the tree sang a bird.’
c. * Khu-mu-saala khw-embela-kho e-nyuni.
17-3-tree 17sm-sang-17loc 9-bird
‘On the tree sang a bird.’
Chapter 4: Some basic linguistic relations 169

(10) a. Ba-ba-ana ba-a-kona e-ngo.

2-2-child 2sm-pst-sleep 16-house
‘The children slept at home.’
b. E-ngo ba-a-kona-o ba-ba-ana.
16-house 2sm-pst-sleep-16loc 2-2-child
‘At home slept the children.’
c. E-ngo e-kona-o ba-ba-ana.
16-house 16sm.pst-sleep-16loc 2-2-child
‘At home slept the children.’

(11) a. Ba-ba-ndu b-engila mu-kanisa.

2-2-person 2sm-pst.enter 18-9church
‘People entered the church.’
b. Mu-kanisa b-engila-mo ba-ba-andu.
18-9church 2-pst.enter-18loc 2-2-person
‘In the church entered people.’
c. * Mu-kanisa mw-engila-mo ba-ba-andu.
18-9church 18sm-pst.enter-18loc 2-2-person

(12) a. Mw-i-duka ka-a-chekhela-mo Moses.

18-9-store 1sm-pst-laugh-18loc 1Moses
‘Inside the store laughed Moses.’
b. * Mw-i-duka mw-a-chekhela-mo Moses.
18-9-store 18sm-pst-laugh-18loc 1Moses

(13) a. Ku-m-pira kw-a-biringila khu-si-kulu.

3-3-ball 3sm-pst-roll 17-7-hill
‘The ball rolled on/down the hill.’
b. Khu-si-kulu kw-a-biringila-kho ku-m-pira.
17-7-hill 3sm-pst-roll-17loc 3-3-ball
‘On/down the hill rolled the ball.’
c. Khu-si-kulu khw-a-biringila-kho ku-m-pira.
17-7-hill 17sm-pst-roll-17loc 3-3-ball
‘On the hill rolled the ball.’

(14) a. O-mw-ana a-a-suna mu-si-wanja.

1-1-child 1sm-pst-jump 18-7-field
‘A child jumped into the field.’
b. Mu-si-wanja a-a-suna-mo o-mw-ana.
18-7-field 1sm-pst-jump-18loc 1-1-child
‘Into the field jumped a child.’
c. * Mu-si-wanja mw-a-suna-mo o-mw-ana.
18-7-field 18sm-pst-jump-18loc 1-1-child
‘Into the field jumped a child.’
Chapter 4: Some basic linguistic relations 170

Problem 4.6: MUSE subject requirement

The acceptability of (1) in vernacular usage of Mainstream U.S. English might tempt one to con-
clude that the subject requirement is not absolute in English. (See § 4.5 of this chapter for relevant
evidence, diagnostics, and discussion.)

(1) a. Seems like they’re finally getting somewhere.

b. Ran to the store for milk this morning.

Provide as much evidence as you can bearing on this conclusion. What contexts can sentences
like those in (1) be used in? Are they highly productive, or highly restricted? What restrictions
do you find, if any? Can you find evidence for the presence (or absence) of subjects in these
instances?

Identifying Puzzles 4.1: Licensing expletives A

The sentences in (1) apparently violate the licensing condition on expletive there, yet they are
still acceptable (though quite formal).

(1) a. At the end of the intermission, there sounded a silvery bell.

b. Then the curtain rose, and there waltzed onto the stage a strangely, but exquisitely
dressed apparition.

Explain what the challenge for the licensing condition is here.

Identifying Puzzles 4.2: Licensing expletives B

Given the licensing condition on expletive there, repeated in (1), determine whether each of the
grammaticality judgments in (2) is expected. The brackets indicate clause boundaries (of to in-
finitive clauses or small clauses).

(1) For expletive there to be grammatical as the subject of a clause, the (Fregean) predicate of
that same clause must be a verb of existence or coming into existence.
(2) a. ✔ Feynman suspected [ there to be a problem with the O-ring ].
b. * Feynman suspected [ there a problem with the O-ring ].
c. ✔ There was suspected [ to be a problem with the O-ring ].
d. * There was suspected [ a problem with the O-ring ].
Chapter 4: Some basic linguistic relations 171

Identifying Puzzles 4.3: Nonfinite complement clauses

Nonfinite clauses like the bracketed sequence in (1) are prima facie counterexamples to the subject
requirement.

(1) I promised [ to come on time ].

Provide as much evidence as you can for the existence of a silent subject in (1) and nonfinite
clauses like it.
Introducing the X′
5
schema of phrase
structure

Chapter outline
5.1 The X′ schema for elementary trees . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
5.1.1 Transitive elementary trees . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
5.1.2 The X′ schema . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176
5.2 Deriving sentences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178
5.2.1 Verb phrases, transitive and intransitive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178
5.2.2 Simple sentences with Inflection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
5.2.3 Complex sentences and complementizers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183
5.2.4 Expected structures of sentences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185
5.3 The adjunct relation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186
5.3.1 Modification is different . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186
5.3.2 The need for an adjunction operation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188
5.4 Distinguishing syntactic dependents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191
5.4.1 A typology of syntactic dependents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191
5.4.2 Diagnosing complements and adjuncts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192
5.5 Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195
5.6 Exercises and problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196

As was mentioned in Chapter 1 we can represent the individual vocabulary items of a

language as small pieces of syntactic structure, or elementary trees. The idea is to generate
phrases and sentences by composing (and possibly otherwise manipulating) these elementary
trees in well-defined ways. In this view, vocabulary items are comparable to the atoms of physical
matter. Atoms do not combine into molecules just because they happen to be next to each other;
rather, their combinatorial possibilities are governed by their internal structure (for instance,
the number of electrons on an atom’s outermost shell and the relative number of protons and
electrons).
Accordingly, in the first part of this chapter, we consider the internal structure of elemen-
tary trees. As in the last chapter, we begin by focusing on how verbs combine with their argu-
ments to form larger phrases. For the time being, we will treat noun phrases and prepositional
phrases as unanalyzed chunks, postponing discussion of their internal structure until Chapter 6.
Chapter 5: Introducing the X′ schema of phrase structure 173

We then generalize the approach developed for verbs and their arguments to the point where
we can build sentences—both simple ones and complex ones containing subordinate clauses. In
order to derive sentences, we will find it necessary to introduce a formal operation called move-
ment, which allows us to represent the fact that constituents can have more than one function
in a sentence.
In the second part of the chapter, we turn to the representation of the modification re-
lation (already familiar from Chapter 4, § 4.2). As we will show, it is not possible to combine
modifiers with elementary trees by the substitution operation introduced in Chapter 1. Besides
substitution and movement, we therefore introduce a third and final formal operation called ad-
junction.
This chapter repeatedly references structural relationships in trees. If the jargon becomes
difficult to follow, you may find yourself wanting to revisit Chapter 3, § 3.3, where the terms are
introduced.

The X′ schema for elementary trees 5.1

5.1.1 Transitive elementary trees

We begin our investigation of the internal structure of elementary trees by considering how a
transitive verb like eat and future tense will combine with the two arguments of eat in a sentence
like (1).

(1) The children will eat the pizza.

From the possibility of pronoun substitution, as in (2), we know that the two arguments are
constituents (specifically, noun phrases).

(2) They will eat it.

We have previously established that English tense and modals are part of the same grammatical
category, called inflection (I◦ ). In principle, the verb could combine with its two noun phrase
arguments and tense in either order, or all at once. Three such possibilities are represented by
the structures in (3) (we address the question of which syntactic category to assign to the nodes
labeled by question marks in a moment).
Chapter 5: Introducing the X′ schema of phrase structure 174

(3) a. ? b. ?

NounPhr Infl ? NounPhr Infl V NounPhr

will will eat
the children V NounPhr the children the pizza
eat
the pizza
c. ?

NounPhr ? NounPhr

the children Infl V the pizza

will eat

However, as we already know from a variety of diagnostics introduced in Chapter 3, § 3.3, transi-
tive verbs form a constituent with their object. We illustrate this with the substitution diagnostic
shown in (4).

(4) The children will eat the pizza. → ✔ The children will do so.

In other words, only (3a) is an adequate representation of the sentence.

What is the syntactic category of the constituents that result from these combinations? In
principle, the result of combining a verb with a noun phrase might be a phrase with either verbal
or nominal properties. But clearly, a phrase like eat the pizza doesn’t have the distribution of a
noun phrase. For instance, it can’t function as the object of a preposition (even a semantically
vacuous one like of ). Nor does it pattern like a noun phrase in other respects. As we have just
seen, the appropriate pro-form for it is not a pronoun, but a form of do so, just as would be the
case if the predicate of the sentence were an intransitive verb. In other words, for the purposes
of do so substitution, the combination of a verb and its object is equivalent to an intransitive verb
(say, intransitive eat); cf. (4) with (5).

(5) The children will eat. → ✔ The children will do so.

So how about if we assign the syntactic category V to the verb-object combination? In that
case, we would be saying that do so can substitute for V. But that won’t do, because then do so
should be able to substitute for eat regardless of the presence of an object. But that isn’t the case,
as shown in (6), which contrasts with (5).

(6) The children will eat the pizza. → * The children will do so the pizza.

Our conclusion from above that these are phrases, characterized as verbal phrases of some sort,
seems most natural. Therefore we will call this a verb phrase (VP).
We can see that future tense (or modals) are outside of this verb phrase by virtue of the
constituency diagnostics isolating the verb phrase. But are subjects and tense at equivalent lev-
els of structure outside of VP? Evidence like (7) suggests that this is not so: because will eat
Chapter 5: Introducing the X′ schema of phrase structure 175

pizza and will love it are conjoined, it suggests that these are constituents to the exclusion of the
subject.

(7) The children [ will eat the pizza ] and [ will love it ].

This suggests that a structure like (8) exists, where tense forms a constituent with the verb phrase,
not including the subject.

(8) ?

NounPhr ?

the children will eat the pizza

In order to represent the facts in (4)–(7), the following notation has been developed. Heads
like Inflection (I) are said to project three levels. Therefore, various higher nodes connected to
inflection (I) are said to be projections of I. As we will see, a central assumption is that charac-
teristics of phrases are defined by the lexical item that projects. The lowest level, I◦ , is a syntactic
category for vocabulary items; it is often indicated simply by I without a superscript, or as I◦ .
These are referred to as syntactic heads. The next level is I′ (read as “I-bar”),1 which contains an
I head (I◦ ) and its sibling (VP). The highest level is the maximal projection (the last level of the
inflection phrase), which is marked as IP.2 The fully labeled structure for (1), with the standard
labels for the three verbal projections, is given in (9).

(9) IP

NounPhr I′

the children I◦ VP
will
eat the pizza

Given (9), we can “un-substitute” the two arguments, marking these instead as substitution
nodes. This yields the elementary tree for future tense will in English in (10).

(10) IP

»NounPhr« I′

I◦ »VP«
will

What this communicates is that the inflection head (I◦ ) will require a noun phrase under
its maximal projection, and will require a verb phrase as a sibling. And it is conclusions like this
that led to a more abstract and general formalization of what phrase structures look like, which
we introduce in the next section.
Chapter 5: Introducing the X′ schema of phrase structure 176

5.1.2 The X′ schema

As we show in § 5.2 later on in this chapter and in Chapter 6, the basic form of the elementary
tree in (10) can be extended to other syntactic categories. In other words, (10) is an instantiation
of a general phrase structure template, shown in (11) and known as the X′ schema (read: X-bar
schema) of phrase structure, also known as X′ -syntax (read: X-bar syntax). Here, X, Y, and Z
are variables over syntactic categories. X′ -syntax is stated abstractly like this so that any kind of
syntactic category can have a structure like in (11).

(11) XP

»ZP« X′
specifieR
X◦ »YP«
head complement

A number of standard terms are used in connection with the X′ schema. The lexical item
◦
in X —the element that projects the entire syntactic structure—is known, following traditional
terminology, as the head. X◦ (sometimes just written X) is the head’s lexical projection, X′ the
intermediate projection, and XP is the maximal projection (sometimes also called phrasal
projection).

Word of Caution
The terms “intermediate” and “phrasal” are somewhat misleading, since they suggest
that the syntactic status of intermediate projections is somehow intermediate between
lexical and phrasal constituents. This is not the case. Intermediate projections are full-
fledged phrases, and “intermediate” simply refers to the position of the projection in the
tree structure—that is to say, the fact that it is not the maximal projection of that XP.

The three projections of the head form the minimal structure that can make up an ele-
mentary tree. Crucially, these projections/levels are all necessary for there to be a well-formed
X′ -syntax structure. So a structure without an intermediate projection, and a maximal projection
is not a well-formed X′ -syntax structure.

Label Projection
X◦ Lexical
X′ Intermediate
XP Maximal (phrasal)

Table 5.1: Terminology and labels for the X′ -schema

Again following traditional terminology, the sibling of the head—YP in (11)—is called its
complement. As we discuss in the next subsection, elementary trees need not include a comple-
ment position. The child of the maximal projection that is not the bar-level node—ZP in (11)—is
Chapter 5: Introducing the X′ schema of phrase structure 177

called the specifier. Each elementary tree has at most one specifier, and elementary trees can
lack a specifier altogether, as we will see below in § 5.2.3 in this chapter. The specifier and com-
plement positions of a head are its (syntactic) argument positions. In summary, an elementary
tree consists of a spine (X◦ -X′ -XP) and from zero to two substitution nodes, which are potential
positions for arguments.

Word of Caution
Note the spelling of complement with e (not i). The idea is that complements complete
the meaning of the head.

Word of Caution
The term “specifier” suggests that constituents in that position somehow specify the
remainder of the tree, and this might lead you to confuse specifiers with modifiers (dis-
cussed later on in this chapter). At one point, constituents in specifier position were indeed
thought to have this function, and that is how the name arose. We no longer believe this,
but the name has stuck (what we might call terminological inertia). In order to minimize
this confusion, syntacticians often use the abbreviation “spec” (pronounced “speck” and
sometimes spelled with an initial capital).

Before ending this section we want to clarify some basic assumptions about what form
X -syntax structures can take. First, it is widely assumed that syntactic structure is at most
′

binary-branching, meaning that a node can have at most two children. That is to say, X′ -syntax
disallows structures like (12).

(12) Unacceptable ternary branching

XP

»ZP« X′ ← not a possible X′ -syntax tree!

X◦ »YP« »WP«

Second, while it is possible for phrases to be in complement and specifier positions, it is not
strictly necessary. So it is possible for those positions to be empty. (13) shows a structure with
no phrase in the specifier position, and (14) shows a structure with no phrase in complement
position.

(13) X′ -syntax tree without a phrase in specifier position

XP

X′

X◦ »YP«
Chapter 5: Introducing the X′ schema of phrase structure 178

(14) X′ -syntax tree without a phrase in complement position

XP

»ZP« X′

X◦
We will see examples of both of these in what follows.

Take Note

The terms “specifier”, “complement”, and “argument” can be used to refer to the struc-
tural positions just defined or to the constituents that substitute into those positions. (This
is analogous to the way we can use a nontechnical term like “bowl” to refer either to the
container itself (Hand me the bowl) or to its contents (I’d like a bowl (of soup)). If it is nec-
essary to avoid confusion between the two senses, we can distinguish between “specifier
position” and “constituent in specifier position” (and analogously for “complement” and
“argument”).

Deriving sentences 5.2

In this section we walk through the structures that are necessary to construct basic sentences
in English (and many other languages). We start with verb phrases, then discuss inflection, and
then discuss complementizers.

5.2.1 Verb phrases, transitive and intransitive

The X′ -schema, on the approach developed here, is the structure of all phrases in human language,
as specified by Universal Grammar. This means that all phrases, not just IPs, will follow the X′ -
schema generally. Take the verb phrase from our tree in (9) above (eat the pizza), which we expect
to have the structure in (15), where the theme object of the verb is represented as the complement
of the verb.
(15) VP

V′

V◦ NounPhr
eat
the pizza
Chapter 5: Introducing the X′ schema of phrase structure 179

What is the structure of the verb phrase when there is no object? The verb eat gives us the
opportunity to look at this, as it’s possible in English to leave objects of eat unspoken.

(16) The children will eat.

What is the structure of a sentence like this? In principle we could imagine a structure like (17a)
or a structure like (17b) that just includes the lexical items will and eat.

(17) a. IP b.
IP
NounPhr I′
NounPhr I′ ← not this structure
◦
the children I VP
will the children I◦ V◦
V′ will eat

V◦
eat

While (17b) is obviously simpler in some ways (because it contains fewer projections), it is not
in fact a well-formed syntactic structure in the X′ schema because the verb does not project
an intermediate projection and a maximal projection. So instead, the correct structure here is
(17a), because it conforms to our formal constraints for phrase structure within the X′ -syntax
framework.

5.2.2 Simple sentences with Inflection

The sentences above place future tense in the head of an IP, the category where inflection is in-
troduced. As we concluded previously, there are a range of subcategories of I◦ (modals, emphatic
do) which are all compatible with structures like this.

(18) a. The children will eat the pizza.

b. The children might eat the pizza.
c. The children could eat the pizza.
d. The children DID eat the pizza.

As we might expect at this point, our elementary tree for inflection from above (and re-
peated here) is applicable.

(19) IP

»NounPhr« I′

I◦ »VerbPhr«

We therefore expect a full IP structure for these:

Chapter 5: Introducing the X′ schema of phrase structure 180

(20) IP

NounPhr I′

the children I◦ VP
⎧ ⎫
⎪
⎪ will ⎪
⎪
⎪
⎪might⎪ ⎪ V′
⎨
⎪ could ⎬
⎪
⎪ ⎪
⎪
⎪ DID ⎪⎪ V◦ NounPhr
⎩ ⎭ eat
the pizza

A point that is likely not lost on English speakers is that past tense and present tense
behave quite differently, in ways that are not obvious to explain based on our discussion thus far.
Focusing on past tense for simplicity: in many past tense sentences, the past tense is inflected
directly on the verb.

(21) The children ate the pizza.

How does the past tense come to be inflected on the verb? First we want to note that in certain
past tense constructions, the tense appears just where we would expect it to. Emphatic do in (22a)
and negated sentences in (22b) are two such examples.

(22) a. The children DID eat the pizza!

b. The children did not eat the pizza.

These give us reason to think that past tense sentences in English are not fundamentally
different in some way: in some instances, the tense nonetheless appears just where we would
expect based on our conclusions about IP thus far. So what happens in examples like (21)? For
now, we’ll just assume that past tense lowers in the structure to attach to the verb. We draw this
lowering with a squiggly arrow to distinguish it from other arrows we will be using.

(23) IP

NounPhr I′

the children I◦ VP
[pst]
V′

V◦ NounPhr
eat
the pizza
Chapter 5: Introducing the X′ schema of phrase structure 181

Extra Info
In this book, we give the syntactic category for modals, auxiliary do, and the silent tense
morphemes that we introduce presently the name “I”, short for “inflection”. (The auxiliary
verbs be and have are introduced in connection with the passive in Chapter 10.)
Nowadays, the usual name for this category is “T”, short for “tense”. Both names des-
ignate exactly the same category. We prefer I (or Infl), because the category includes
modals, which do not productively express tense in English, and also includes agreement
(conjugation to match the subject). The reason for the other name is historical. The ab-
breviation I was current at one point, but then there were thought to be reasons to “split”
it into two separate heads: T(ense) and Agr(eement). This split was later abandoned, and
Agr(eement) became obsolete. Although there was no reason not to bring back the old
name I, the new label T stuck. Another instance of terminological inertia!

We are now in a position to answer the second question posed earlier—namely, how can
sentences be represented in a syntactically uniform way regardless of the morphological expres-
sion of tense? A simple answer to this question is possible if we assume that English has tense
elements that are structurally analogous to auxiliary do and modals, but not pronounced indepen-
dently, as shown in (24). In this book, as is conventional in linguistics we adopt the convention
of enclosing such silent elements in square brackets. As in phonology and morphology, we call
such designations features: properties of a head that are linguistically-real, whether or not they
are directly pronounced.

(24) a. IP b. IP

»NounPhr« I′ »NounPhr« I′

I◦ »VP« I◦ »VP«
[pRs] [pst]

Elementary trees like (24) make it possible to derive structures for sentences in which tense
is expressed as a bound morpheme along the same lines as for sentences containing a modal or
auxiliary do. In (25), we illustrate the derivation of They waited.
Chapter 5: Introducing the X′ schema of phrase structure 182

(25) a. VP b. IP

V′ »NounPhr« I′

V◦ I◦ VP
wait [pst]
V′

V◦
wait

Select elementary tree for verb Substitute structure in (25a) in

elementary tree for inflection

c. IP d. IP

NounPhr I′ NounPhr I′

they I◦ VP they I◦ VP
[pst] [pst]
V′ V′

V◦ V◦
wait wait

Substitute subject argument Lower tense onto verb

As a final note, notice in (25a) that we have shown yet another way to draw the simplest sort of
X′ -syntax trees: here the binary branches are not drawn because there are no phrases in those
positions. This is equivalent to drawing empty binary branches.
Chapter 5: Introducing the X′ schema of phrase structure 183

5.2.3 Complex sentences and complementizers

This section is devoted to the derivation of sentences that contain complement clauses (also
known as clausal complements). Some examples are given in (26); the complement clauses
are in italics.

(26) a. We will ask if they might leave.

b. We believe that they might come.

Although sentences with complement clauses can become unboundedly long (recall the in-
stances of recursion in Chapter 1), deriving structures for them proceeds straightforwardly along
the lines already laid out. If and that are both complementizers, so called because they have the
effect of turning independent sentences into the complements of a matrix verb. Complementizers
are a grammatical category (as we introduced in Chapter 2), and as their own lexical heads, per
X′ -syntax they project full X′ -syntax structures, as shown in the elementary trees in (27).

(27) a. CP b. CP

C′ C′

C◦ »IP« C◦ »IP«
if that

Given elementary trees like (27), we can derive the italicized complement clause in (26a) as
in (28).

(28) a. VP b. IP

V′ »NounPhr« I′

V◦ I◦ VP
leave might
V′

V◦
leave

Select elementary tree for verb Substitute structure in (28a) in

elementary tree for inflection
Chapter 5: Introducing the X′ schema of phrase structure 184

c. IP d. CP

NounPhr I′ C′

they I◦ VP C◦ IP
might if
V′ NounPhr I′

V◦ they I◦ VP
leave might
V′

V◦
leave

Substitute argument Add complementizer layer

The structure in (28d) in turn allows us to derive the entire matrix clause, as in (29). For
readability, we collapse the internal structure of the complement clause in what follows.

(29)
a. VP b. VP

V′ V′

V◦ »CP« V◦ CP
ask ask
if they might leave

Elementary tree for matrix clause Substitute clausal complement (28d)

verb
Chapter 5: Introducing the X′ schema of phrase structure 185

c. IP

NounPhr I′

we I◦ VP
will
V′

V◦ CP
ask
if they might leave

Substitute (29b) and subject noun phrase into elementary tree

for English will

Given representations like (29c), we can now formally characterize recursive structures
as in (30).

(30) a. A structure is recursive if and only if it contains at least one recursive node.
b. A node is recursive if and only if it dominates a node distinct from it, but with the
same label.

The VP node in (29c) is recursive because it dominates another VP node below it (inside the em-
bedded clause). Some recursive nodes are indirectly recursive as in this case: here, a VP node
is contained within the main clause VP but the main clause node does not directly dominate
the embedded VP. Below we will see an instance of directly recursive nodes as well (for adjunc-
tion).

5.2.4 Expected structures of sentences

There is much more to be said even about the structure of basic sentences, let alone more detailed
aspects of specific more complicated constructions. But with VP, IP, and CP, we have the structure
of most basic clauses.
Chapter 5: Introducing the X′ schema of phrase structure 186

(31) CP

C′

C◦ IP

I′

I◦ VP

V′

V◦

This is what is often called the main “spine” of the clause; various constituents will be added to
these structures, but trees will often display a main skeleton like this that is the backbone of the
clause. As we will see, different kinds of syntactic constructions will use different subparts of this
structure, and will also add different projections. But as a baseline expectation, this will be the
typical structure of full sentences, which we will motivate more in what follows.

The adjunct relation 5.3

5.3.1 Modification is different

The elementary trees introduced so far allow us to represent two of the three basic linguistic
relations discussed in Chapter 4—namely, argumenthood and predication. As we have seen, ob-
jects of a verb are represented by substituting the complement argument positions in the verb’s
elementary tree. VPs and IPs can be treated as arguments (specifically, as complements) of I◦
and C◦ , respectively: VP is typically a complement of I◦, and IP is typically a complement of C◦.
Subjects in our model so far appear in Spec,IP. But recall from Chapter 4 that there is another
major fundamental linguistic relation: modification. While arguments are the significant, se-
mantically required (and often syntactically required) participants of an event, many sentences
include additional information in the form of adjectives, adverbs, prepositional phrases, and the
like. Modifiers like these are not required by a predicate and are usually optional in a sentence,
but they nonetheless have to be accounted for in our theory.
Therefore, an important remaining question is how to represent the modification relation
using the X′ schema developed so far. Neither of the two head-argument relations (head-specifier,
head-complement) adequately represents the relation between a head and its modifier. As we
have seen, when a verb combines with a complement, the category of the resulting constituent
Chapter 5: Introducing the X′ schema of phrase structure 187

(V′ ) is distinct from that of the verb (V◦ ) (recall the contrast between (4) and (6)). By contrast,
modifying a verb-complement combination like eat in (32) does not change the syntactic category
of the resulting constituent, which remains V′ (the modifier is in italics).

(32) a. The children will eat the pizza.

b. The children will eat the pizza with gusto.

This is evident from the do so substitution facts in (33), where do so can replace either the
unmodified or the modified verb-complement combination.

(33) a. The children will eat the pizza with gusto. → ✔ The children will do so with gusto.
b. The children will eat the pizza with gusto. → ✔ The children will do so.

The same pattern holds for intransitive verbs that combine with a modifier.

(34) a. The children will eat with gusto. → ✔ The children will do so with gusto.
b. The children will eat with gusto. → ✔ The children will do so.

Let us assume a definition of do so substitution that says that do so substitutes for V′ con-
stituents (as articulated in (35)).

(35) Do so substitutes for instances of V′ .

The do so substitution facts in (33) and (34) motivate the syntactic structure for (32b) that is given
in (36) (for clarity, we focus on the internal structure of the VP).

(36) VP

V′

V′ PP

V◦ NounPhr with gusto

eat
the pizza

Because do so can substitute for a verbal constituent without a complement (eat), with a comple-
ment (eat the pizza), and with a complement and a modifier (eat the pizza with gusto), it is reason
to think that all of these phrases are the same (structural) sort of phrase: here we represent them
as instances of intermediate projections of V (V′ ). The structural relation of the modifier with
gusto to the spine of the V projection is known as the adjunct relation, and the modifier itself is
said to be an adjunct. Modifiers are always represented as adjuncts. As a result, “modifier” and
“adjunct” tend to be used somewhat interchangeably.3
Chapter 5: Introducing the X′ schema of phrase structure 188

5.3.2 The need for an adjunction operation

The structure in (36) raises the question of what elementary tree for transitive eat is involved
in its derivation. “Unsubstituting” both the object and the modifier, as we did in (10) for trees
containing only arguments, yields the structure in (37).

(37) VP

V′

V′ »PP« ← not a possible elementary tree!

V◦ »NounPhr«
eat

Is the structure in (37) a satisfactory elementary tree? Clearly, allowing it means that our
grammar now contains two elementary trees for transitive eat because there must exist an ele-
mentary tree without the modifier as well (since the modifier is optional). At first glance, this
doesn’t seem like a serious problem, since we already allow two elementary trees for eat, the
intransitive and transitive ones in (38).

(38) a. VP b. VP

V′ V′

V◦ V◦ »NounPhr«
eat eat

But (37) differs in a crucial respect from the structures in (38): it is a recursive structure:
a V node contains another V′ node. This has an extremely undesirable consequence: namely,
′

that if we were to derive structures like (36) by means of elementary trees like those in (37), there
would be no principled way to avoid an unlimited number of such elementary trees as part of
English speaker’s knowledge of their language. For instance, the derivations of the sentences in
(39), with their increasing number of modifiers, would each require a distinct elementary tree for
drink, and each additional modifier would require an additional elementary tree.

(39) a. We would drink lemonade.

b. We would drink lemonade / in summer.
c. We would drink lemonade / in summer / on the porch.
d. We would drink lemonade / in summer / on the porch / with friends.
e. We would drink lemonade / in summer / on the porch / with friends / for fun.

But the whole point of a generative grammar is to generate an unbounded set of sentences from
a finite set of elementary expressions and operations. Given this aim, elementary trees must be
non-recursive structures, with the consequence that adjuncts cannot be integrated into larger
Chapter 5: Introducing the X′ schema of phrase structure 189

syntactic structures by substitution. Accordingly, we introduce a further tree operation called

adjunction.4
For the moment, we will use the adjunction operation to integrate modifiers into syntactic
structures. As we will see in Chapter 8, the adjunction operation is also used for other purposes.
Whatever its linguistic purpose, however, it is always the same formal operation. We will show
how this works with our sentence in (40a). First we substitute the object argument into the
elementary tree for eat from (38b).

(40) a. The children will eat the pizza with gusto.

b. VP

V′

V◦ NounPhr
eat
the pizza

Substitute argument

We can think of adjunction as a two-step process that targets a particular node. When the
purpose of adjunction is to integrate a modifier into a larger structure, as it is here, the target
of adjunction is an intermediate projection, indicated by the red box in (41a). The first step in
carrying out adjunction is to make a clone of the target of adjunction that immediately dominates
the original node, as in (41b). The second step is to attach the tree for the modifier as a child of
this higher clone, as in (41c).

(41) a. VP b. VP

V′ V′

V◦ NounPhr V′
eat
the pizza
V◦ NounPhr
eat
the pizza

Select target of adjunction Clone target of adjunction

Chapter 5: Introducing the X′ schema of phrase structure 190

c. VP

V′

V′ PP

V◦ NounPhr with gusto

eat
the pizza

Attach modifier as child of higher

clone

Deriving the rest of the structure for the entire sentence proceeds as outlined in § 5.2.2 earlier, as
shown in (42).

(42) a. IP

»NounPhr« I′

I◦ VP
will
V′

V′ PP

V◦ NounPhr with gusto

eat
the pizza

Substitute (40b) in elementary tree for tense

Chapter 5: Introducing the X′ schema of phrase structure 191

b. IP

NounPhri I′

the children I◦ VP
will
V′

V′ PP

V◦ NounPhr with gusto

eat
the pizza

Substitute subject into Spec,IP

Distinguishing syntactic dependents 5.4

5.4.1 A typology of syntactic dependents

A convenient cover term for complements, specifiers, and adjuncts is syntactic dependent. Each
type of syntactic dependent stands in a unique structural relation to the head and the spine that
it projects. Complements and adjuncts are both children of intermediate projections, but they
differ in that complements are siblings of heads, whereas adjuncts are siblings of intermediate
projections. As siblings of intermediate projections, adjuncts resemble specifiers. But adjuncts
are children of intermediate projections, whereas a specifier is the child of a maximal projection.
These structural relations and distinctions are summarized in Table 5.2, which also includes the
formal operations that fill or create the positions in question. The relevance here is that comple-
ments and specifiers can realize substitution nodes in elementary trees—that is to say, they can
be selected by heads (see Chapter 7). Adjuncts, on the other hand, are not selected by heads, and
are instead optional additions to structure.

Relation to head Sibling of… Child of… Formal operation

Complement Head Intermediate projection Substitution
Adjunct Intermediate projection Intermediate projection Adjunction
Specifier Intermediate projection Maximal projection Substitution

Table 5.2: Summary of structural relations and formal operations

Chapter 5: Introducing the X′ schema of phrase structure 192

5.4.2 Diagnosing complements and adjuncts

Given Table 5.2, it is relatively straightforward to tell whether a constituent is represented in a
particular tree diagram as a complement or as an adjunct. However, it is not always self-evident
whether a phrase is a complement or an adjunct as a matter of linguistic fact (that is, in speakers’
mental representations of their language’s grammar).

Word of Caution
Remember that tree structures are models of linguistic facts, that can be correct or incor-
rect. Just because it is possible to build a tree that represents a certain phrase as a com-
plement doesn’t mean that the phrase actually is a complement in the mental grammar of
speakers. So learning to draw trees correctly according to our theory is just the first step
towards using that theory and its trees to accurately model linguistic knowledge.

Distinguishing verbal complements and adjuncts with do so

A fairly reliable way to determine the relation of a particular phrase to a verb in English is to use
do so substitution. If a phrase need not be included as part of the sequence being replaced by do
so, then it is an adjunct. If it must be included, then it is a complement. Using this test, we find
that phrases specifying cause or rationale, time, location, or manner are generally adjuncts, even
if they are noun phrases. Some examples, including the results of do so substitution, are given in
(43); the adjuncts are in italics.

(43) a. Rationale:
They will wait for no good reason, but we will do so for a very good one.
b. Duration:
They will wait (for) a day, but we will do so (for) a month.
c. Location:
They will wait for her in the parking lot, but we will do so across the street.
d. Manner:
They will wait for her patiently, but we will do so impatiently.

In the examples that we have seen in this book so far, semantic arguments are expressed as
syntactic arguments (or not at all). It is possible, however, for semantic arguments to be expressed
in the syntax as adjuncts. For example, the predicate rent (from a semantic point of view) is a
five-place predicate, with arguments denoting property owner, tenant, rental property, amount of
money, and lease term. Some of these semantic arguments are expressed as syntactic arguments.
For instance, in (44), the phrase denoting the rental property is a complement, as is evident from
the results of do so substitution.

(44) Dennis rented the apartment to Lois. → * Dennis did so the apartment to Lois.

By contrast, do so substitution shows that the phrase denoting the lease term is an adjunct, even
though lease terms are arguably semantic arguments of rent on a par with rental properties.
Chapter 5: Introducing the X′ schema of phrase structure 193

(45) Dennis rented Lois the apartment for two months. → ✔ Dennis did so for two months.

Locality as a diagnostic
The nature of complements and adjuncts in the X′ -schema requires that complements have a more
local relationship with heads than adjuncts do. But the X′ -schema says nothing about whether
adjuncts (to the same phrase) are ordered with respect to each other. (46) show that two adjuncts
to the verb phrase can appear in either order:

(46) a. We would drink lemonade in summer on the porch.

b. We would drink lemonade on the porch in summer.

(47) a. * We would drink in summer lemonade on the porch.

b. * We would drink on the porch lemonade in summer.
c. * We would drink in summer on the porch lemonade.
d. * We would drink on the porch in summer lemonade.

It is facts like this that lead to the conclusion that semantic arguments of predicates are
complements (or specifiers, in the case of subjects), and adjuncts are modifiers that have distinct
properties. Here, the theme object of drink (lemonade) must be closer to the verb than adjuncts
are: complements are siblings of heads and adjuncts are siblings of bar level nodes.

Obligatoriness as a diagnostic
A final word should be said about the correlation between a syntactic dependent’s obligatory
or optional character and its status as a complement or adjunct. It is tempting to assume the
biconditional relationship in the “Dream world” column in Table 5.3.5

If a syntactic dependent is… then it is… Dream world Real world

obligatory a complement. TRUE TRUE
a complement obligatory. TRUE sometimes FALSE

Table 5.3: Correlation between obligatoriness and complement status

But as the rightmost column indicates, the biconditional relationship doesn’t hold. It is
true that obligatory syntactic dependents are complements. For instance, the contrast in (48) is
evidence that the noun phrase following devour is a complement, a conclusion that is borne out
by do so substitution in (49).

(48) Every time I see him…

a. * …he’s devouring.
b. ✔ …he’s devouring a six-inch steak.
(49) He devoured a hamburger and french fries, …
a. * …and she did so six samosas.
Chapter 5: Introducing the X′ schema of phrase structure 194

b. ✔ …and she did so, too.

But not all complements are obligatory. The grammaticality of both (50a) and (50b) shows
that the phrase French fries in (50b) is optional. But the ungrammaticality of (50c) shows that it
is nevertheless a complement.

(50) a. ✔ She ate, and he did so, too.

b. ✔ She ate French fries, and he did so, too.
c. * She ate French fries, and he did so three samosas.

Although the second row of Table 5.3 is false, the first row does have the valid consequence
in (51). We exclude mention of specifiers here, as this discussion is specifically addressing the
distinction between complements and adjuncts.

(51) If a non-specifier syntactic dependent is not a complement, it is not obligatory.

The two valid generalizations in the first row of Table 5.3 and (51) can be summarized
succinctly as in (52); these are useful for distinguishing complements and adjuncts.

(52) a. Obligatory syntactic dependents are complements.

b. Adjuncts are optional.

Therefore, optionality and obligatoriness are both useful properties to help us diagnose comple-
ments and adjuncts. But there is not a one-to-one relationship between the structures and the
empirical patterns, so structures must be analyzed with precision, and utilizing multiple diagnos-
tics when they are available.

New Empirical Observations

▶ Verb phrases form a constituent distinct from inflection.

▶ Complements are different from adjuncts.
• Complements are selected by heads, and are positioned close to heads.
• Adjuncts are not selected by heads, and are outside of the head-complement
constituent.

Components of the Theoretical Model

Stable concepts:
▶ All nodes in a tree are binary-branching (some branches may be empty)
▶ X′ -syntax
▶ heads
▶ complements
▶ specifiers
 Chapter 5: Introducing the X′ schema of phrase structure 195

▶ adjuncts
▶ adjunction (operation)
▶ new phrase types, and the sentential “spine”:
▷ VP
▷ IP
▷ CP

Concepts to be developed in more detail later:

▶ tense-lowering

Notes 5.5
1. Why is X′ read as X-bar when it contains not a bar (X), but a prime symbol? The reason is that when the idea of
bar levels was introduced in the 1970s, the various levels were distinguished by horizontal bars over a syntactic
category. The lowest level had no bars, the first level one, and the second two. But back in the days of typewriters,
such overbars were cumbersome to type (you typed the symbol –*, rolled up the platen a bit, backspaced, typed
an overbar *–, repeated from –* to *– for each overbar, and then rolled the platen down again the right amount).
Overbars are also expensive to typeset, and even today, they aren’t part of many standard character sets. Therefore,
it was and continues to be convenient to substitute prime symbols for overbars. However, linguists haven’t updated
their terminology (terminological inertia!), and so the old term “bar” is still with us.

2. At earlier stages of the theory development the highest bar level is I′′ (read as “V double bar”), which is the result of
combining a I′ with a subject. Likewise, the lowest level was the first “bar-level”. For a long time, now, the tradition
has been to only refer to the intermediate level as a bar-level, referring to the lowest as the head, and the highest
level as the maximal projection, or the phrase-level.

3. In this book, we will usually use modifier/modification to refer to the semantic role of modifiers, and will generally
use adjunct to refer to the syntactic relationship. But in most instances that we encounter in this book, these terms
will consistently refer to the same entities. For instance, as we mentioned in Chapter 4, a verb like laugh denotes
the set of entities that laugh. Combining the verb with a modifier like uproariously yields the expression laugh
uproariously, which denotes a subset of the set denoted by laugh. We will use the term ‘adjunct’ when focusing
on a constituent’s structural position in a tree. As we will see later on in this chapter, it is possible for semantic
arguments to be represented as syntactic adjuncts. This does not change the semantic argument into a modifier,
however!

4. The specific operation of interest to us is sometimes called Chomsky-adjunction, to distinguish it from Joshi-
adjunction, a different formal operation that plays a central role in Tree-Adjoining Grammar (Joshi, Levy, and Taka-
hashi 1975).

5. A similarly tempting biconditional relationship (and false there, too) was discussed in § 3.2.2 of Chapter 3.
Chapter 5: Introducing the X′ schema of phrase structure 196

Exercises and problems 5.6

Exercise 5.1: Trees with X′ -syntax A
Draw trees for the sentences below using X′ -syntax. Draw triangles over all noun phrases (Noun-
Phr or NP) and prepositional phrases (PrepPhr or PP) and adverb phrases (AdvP), since we have
not gotten to the internal structure of those phrases yet.
1. The very clever student will study every night in the library.
2. Tired students will always take naps before class.
3. Khydence found a book about Maya Angelou in the park.
4. Babies run rather slowly.
5. Lucca’s incessant talking always annoys Maisha.

Exercise 5.2: Trees with X′ -syntax B

Draw trees for the sentences below using X′ -syntax. Draw triangles over all noun phrases (Noun-
Phr or NP) and prepositional phrases (PrepPhr or PP) and adverb phrases (AdvP), since we have
not gotten to the internal structure of those phrases yet.
1. Langston wants Maisha to come to school today. (assume to is Infl)
2. Preston said that Maisha will eat a hamburger for dinner.
3. That Maisha worked for the whole night might intimidate Preston.
4. Anabella thinks that Lucca should thoroughly clean the kitchen.
5. Preston suggested that Victor should write a joke on the blackboard.
6. Many culinary students believe that their exams should be eaten.
7. The baker kneaded the dough with impressive force.

Exercise 5.3: Trees with X′ -syntax C

Draw trees for the sentences below using X′ -syntax. Draw triangles over all noun phrases (Noun-
Phr, or NP) and prepositional phrases (PrepPhr, or PP) and adverb phrases (AdvP), since we have
not gotten to the internal structure of those phrases yet.
1. The dog jumped over the ditch.
2. An aspiring doctor should study hard every day.
3. That the faucet is dripping might upset your father.
4. It might anger your mother that you turned up the thermostat.
5. The chef carefully stirred the sauce.
Chapter 5: Introducing the X′ schema of phrase structure 197

6. Every dog knows the location of their treats.

7. Lucca might never play his music in public.
8. The students might play games at recess today.
9. The latest article in the New York Times explains the current international crisis.

Exercise 5.4: Fregean and of Aristotelian predicates

What is the X′ status of Fregean and of Aristotelian predicates? That is, what kind of node in
an X′ -syntax tree corresponds to a Fregean predicate, and what kind of node corresponds to an
Aristotelian predicate? You should be able to answer in one or two brief sentences.

Exercise 5.5: Evaluating tree structures

The trees in (1) fail to correctly account for certain grammaticality judgments. That is to say,
they make wrong predictions about the structure of these sentences. What are these wrong
predictions? Provide evidence that suggests that each of these trees are inaccurate analyses.

(1) a. IP

NounPhr I′

Bertie I◦ VP
[pst]
V′

V′ PP

V′ NounPhr in one sitting

V◦ a dozen apples
consumed
b. IP

NounPhr I′

Jeeves I◦ VP
will
V′

V◦ NounPhr PP
mix
his special concoction for Bertie
Chapter 5: Introducing the X′ schema of phrase structure 198

Exercise 5.6: Distinguishing arguments and adjuncts A

A. Are the italicized phrases in (1) syntactic arguments or adjuncts? Explain. There is no need
for extensive discussion beyond your one-word conclusion and the evidence from do so
substitution on which you base it.

(1) a. They waited for us.

b. This program costs twenty dollars.
c. We drove to Denver.
d. We worded the letter carefully.
e. They may behave very inconsiderately.
f. This volcano might erupt any minute.

B. Build structures for the sentences in (1). The structures you build should be consistent with
the evidence you gave in (A).

Exercise 5.7: Distinguishing arguments and adjuncts B

A. Build structures for the sentences in (1). Motivate your attachment of the lowest argument
or adjunct in each sentence (in other words, provide the evidence that leads you to attach
the phrase in question the way that you do).

(1) a. They demolished the house.

b. Mona Lisa called the other neighbor.
c. Mona Lisa called the other day.
d. You will recall that her smile amazed everyone.
e. Most people doubt that Mona Lisa lives in Kansas.
f. My friend wondered if Mona Lisa would come to his party.

B. Indicate all recursive nodes in the structures that you build for (1).

Exercise 5.8: Structures for ambiguous sentences

A. (1) is structurally ambiguous. Paraphrase (or otherwise distinguish) the two relevant in-
terpretations. (Focus on the structural ambiguity, ignoring the referential ambiguity of
they.)

(1) They claimed that they paid on the 15th .

B. Build a structure for each of the interpretations, indicating which structure goes with which
interpretation. We encourage you to build chunks and indicate how they fit together dif-
ferently for the two interpretations.
C. Indicate all recursive nodes in the structures that you build for (1).
Chapter 5: Introducing the X′ schema of phrase structure 199

Exercise 5.9: Distinguishing arguments and adjuncts C

A. Make up a sentence with two adjuncts. Provide syntactic evidence that the adjuncts are
adjuncts rather than syntactic arguments. Then build the structure for the sentence. Finally,
switch the linear order of the adjuncts, and build the structure for the resulting word order
variant of your original sentence.
B. Make up a simple sentence in which one of the semantic arguments of the verb is expressed
in the syntax as an adjunct. Provide evidence that the adjunct is an adjunct and not a
complement. Finally, build the structure for your sentence.

Exercise 5.10: Core X′ structures

Is it possible for two adjuncts to be siblings? Explain why or why not.

Exercise 5.11: Basic phrase structure of Swahili

Below are some simple sentences from Swahili. Consider each of them in order to inform your
analysis, and draw a tree for the bracketed portion of (1d).
You can ignore subject agreement (glossed here as sm ‘subject marker’); we generally as-
sume it arises on Inflection, and we will develop ideas about how this works later in the textbook.
If you want to draw it into the tree, put it in Infl along with tense.
Background: Swahili has a robust noun class system: noun classes are glossed with cardinal
numbers (1, 2, 3, 4, etc). You don’t have to explain anything about noun classes, though they do
show what is agreeing with what, which can be helpful to know. Glossing conventions: sm =
subject marker (i.e., subject agreement on verbs), sm glosses are accompanied with a noun class
gloss based on what noun class the subject they agree in belongs to; pst = past tense; pRf = perfect
aspect (translated similar to past tense); fut = future tense; pRs = present tense.

(1) a. Watoto wa-me-ondoka.

2-children 2sm-pRf-leave
‘The children left.’
b. M-toto a-ta-tembelea wa-zazi wao
1-child 1sm-fut-visit 2-parents 2.their
‘The child will visit their parents.’
c. Wa-zazi wetu wa-li-kula maharagwe.
2-parents our 2sm-pst-eat beans
‘Our parents ate beans.’
d. Wa-toto wa-na-jua [ kwamba wa-zazi wao wa-li-kula maharagwe. ]
2-children 2sm-pRs-know that 2sm-parents 2.their 2sm-pst-eat beans
‘The children know that their parents ate beans.’
Chapter 5: Introducing the X′ schema of phrase structure 200

Problem 5.1: Thinking about the model

In connection with introducing the formal operation of adjunction, we insisted that “the whole
point of a generative grammar is to generate an unbounded set of sentences from a finite set of
elementary expressions and operations”. What problem arises if we allow a generative grammar
to include a potentially unbounded set of elementary trees or operations? That is to say, why
restrict our theory to certain kinds of trees and operations? Why not just invent whatever we
need for new puzzles ad infinitum?

Problem 5.2: Linear order and the X′ schema

Is it possible for an adjunct to precede a complement? How about immediately precede?
What if you are allowed to “swivel” at X′ in the X′ schema, so that YP precedes X? (The
resulting head-final structures are discussed in more detail in Chapter 6, § 6.4.)

(1) a. XP b. XP

»ZP« X′ »ZP« X′
(spec) (spec)
X◦ »YP« »YP« X◦
head (comp) (comp) head

Head-initial Head-final

Problem 5.3: Finite verb phrases in English

Uninflected verb phrases in English are generally consistently diagnosable as constituents using
our diagnostics, but inflected verb phrases (past tense, in English) consistently fail constituency
diagnostics.

(1) Substitution:
a. She will write a book. → ✔ She will do so.
b. The two boys could order tuna salad sandwiches. → ✔ The two boys could do so.

(2) Question/short answer:

a. What will she do? → ✔ Write a book.
b. What could the two boys do? → ✔ Order tuna salad sandwiches.

(3) a. Substitution, uninflected verb:

She will write a book. → ✔ She will do so.
b. Substitution, inflected verb:
She wrote a book. → ✔ She did so.
Chapter 5: Introducing the X′ schema of phrase structure 201

(4) a. Question/short answer, uninflected verb:

What will she do? → ✔ Write a book.
b. Question/short answer, inflected verb:
What did she do? → *?Wrote a book.
c. Question/short answer, inflected verb:
What did she do? → ✔ Write a book.

(5) Movement, uninflected verb phrase:

a. (She says that) she will write a book, → ✔ (and) write a book, she will .
b. though she may write a book → ✔ write a book though she may
(6) Movement, inflected verb phrase:
a. (She says that) she wrote a book, → * (and) wrote a book, she .
b. though she wrote a book → * wrote a book though she

(7) It cleft, uninflected verb phrase:

She will write a book. → ⁇ It is write a book that she will .
(8) It cleft, inflected verb phrase:
She wrote a book. → * It is wrote a book that she .

Based on the structure of the clause that we established in this chapter:

1. Why do uninflected verb phrases in English (verb phrases in the future tense or with modals
in which the verb doesn’t bear inflection) consistently pass constituency diagnostics?
2. Why do inflected verb phrases in English (past tense) consistently fail constituency diag-
nostics?
3. What does this tell us about the relationship of verb inflection and constituency diagnos-
tics?

Identifying Puzzles 5.1: Ditransitive verbs

Consider the individual examples from a range of different languages below which are ditransitive
verbs, that is, verbs with two objects. The examples below are drawn from a wide variety of
languages from different families (and with different word orders) to demonstrate the generality
of the pattern.
Glossing conventions: pst = past tense; pRf = perfect aspect; fut = future tense; pRs = present
tense; stat = stative aspect; dat = dative case. Glosses for agreements are simplified in each
language as the details are irrelevant for the purposes of this exercise.

(1) a. The children gave their parents a present.

b. M-toto a-li-wa-pa wa-zazi wao zawadi.
child agR-pst-agR-give parents their gift
‘The child gave their parents a gift.’
Chapter 5: Introducing the X′ schema of phrase structure 202

c. Amharic (Afroasiatic, Ethiopa; Amberger 2009, 747)

Ləmmɑ lə-lɨǰ-u məsʼhɑf sətʼtʼ-ə-(w).
Lemma to-child-def book give-agR-(agR)
‘Lemma gave the book to the child.’
d. Tlapanec (Otomanguean, Mexico; Wichman 2010)
Ni-ʃn-û marìa dudî adà.
pfv-give-agR Maria avocado boy
‘María gave the boy an avocado.’
e. Tima (Kordofanian, Sudan; G. J. Dimmendaal 2010)
Kúúkù à-ŋ́ -kéél cɪ́mɪ̀ɪ̀ íí-hamid.
Kuuku stat-agR-buy goat dat-Hamid
‘Kuuku has bought a goat for Hamid.’

All of the examples we dealt with in the main text of this chapter had (at most) one object. This is
intentional, and the text will maintain this stance until Chapter 13. The reason for this is because
ditransitive verbs (which are common across a wide range of languages) pose a central puzzle for
our theory. What is that puzzle?
Don’t attempt to give a solution within the X′ schema! Just identify what the theoretical challenge
is that is posed by the data. We will get to solutions later in the textbook.

Identifying Puzzles 5.2: The formal constraints on adjunction

In the chapter, we define adjunction as an operation that clones a target node and attaches a
phrase as the child of the higher clone. Imagine an operation that clones the target node and
attaches a phrase as the child of the lower clone. Would such an operation be useful? Explain.
 6
Extending the X′
schema

Chapter outline
6.1 Noun phrases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204
6.1.1 Parallels and differences between noun phrases and sentences . . . . . . 204
6.1.2 Noun phrases as DPs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205
6.1.3 More on determiners . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 210
6.1.4 Modification and related issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215
6.2 Adjective phrases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 222
6.3 Prepositional phrases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223
6.3.1 Transitivity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 224
6.3.2 Clausal complements of prepositions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225
6.4 Crosslinguistic variation in headedness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227
6.4.1 Head-final and head-initial patterns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 228
6.4.2 Harmonic and disharmonic headedness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231
6.5 Encountering new grammatical categories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233
6.6 Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235
6.7 Exercises and problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 238

In Chapter 5, we introduced a normal form for phrase structure, the X′ schema, according
to which lexical items project an elementary tree consisting of a spine and up to two argument
positions. In this chapter, we extend the X′ schema to syntactic categories other than V, I, or C,
to include N(oun), D(eterminer), A(djective), and P(reposition). The final section of the chapter
illustrates crosslinguistic variation with regard to the order of heads and complements.
Chapter 6: Extending the X′ schema 204

Noun phrases 6.1

6.1.1 Parallels and differences between noun phrases and sentences

The X′ schema of phrase structure that we introduced in Chapter 5 is a specific expression of a
more general idea—namely, that lexical items of different syntactic categories show significant
cross-categorial parallels. In the history of generative grammar, this idea was primarily based
on the cross-categorial parallels between noun phrases and sentences (Chomsky 1970). In what
follows, we review these parallels as well as some differences between the two categories.

Argument structure
Early in the history of generative grammar (Lees 1960), it was observed that sentences like (1a)
and noun phrases like (1b) share several important properties.

(1) a. The cat destroyed the couch.

b. the cat’s destruction of the couch

The semantically central element of the sentence in (1a) is the verb destroyed. Its semantic argu-
ments, the agent the cat and the theme the couch, are both expressed as syntactic arguments of
the sentence. In a parallel way, the semantically central element in the noun phrase in (1b) is the
nominal counterpart of destroy, the noun destruction. Like the verb, the noun is associated with
an agent argument and a theme argument that are both overtly expressed—in this case, as the
possessive expression the cat’s and the prepositional phrase of the couch.
The correspondence in (1) is supported by a similar one between the passive sentence in
(2a) and its passive-like noun phrase counterpart in (2b).

(2) a. The couch was destroyed (by the cat).

b. the couch’s destruction (by the cat)

In both of these examples, the argument preceding the head is now the theme the couch(’s), and
the agent argument is expressed by an optional by phrase.
A further parallel between sentences and noun phrases is that in both categories, the se-
mantically central element—the verb or the noun—can be modified in similar ways, as illustrated
in (3) and (4).1

(3) Adverb: She regularly gives money to the organization.

Prepositional phrase: She gives money to the organization on a regular basis.

(4) Adjective: her regular gifts of money to the organization.

Prepositional phrase: her gifts of money to the organization on a regular basis
Chapter 6: Extending the X′ schema 205

(5) Adverb: The cat frequently destroys the couch.

Prepositional phrase: The cat destroys the couch with high frequency.

(6) Adjective: the cat’s frequent destruction of the couch.

Prepositional phrase: the cat’s destruction of the couch with high frequency

There are of course differences between sentences and noun phrases: for example, agents within
noun phrases (in English) are typically introduced as possessors and not directly; likewise, noun
phrase object arguments of nouns are generally inside PPs and cannot be directly complements
of the N heads themselves. So there are certainly important differences, but also intriguing sim-
ilarities.

6.1.2 Noun phrases as DPs

A striking fact about nouns is that, in many constructions in many languages, they cannot in
general function as arguments on their own, but must be accompanied by a determiner.

(7) a. * Assignment is not difficult.

b. * You should hand in assignment.

(8) a. { The, this, that } assignment is not difficult.

b. You should hand in { the, this, that } assignment.

A perhaps-surprising conclusion of generative syntacticians from facts like these (and others) is
that noun phrases are the result of composing two projections, one headed by the noun and the
other by the determiner, as shown in (9).

(9) a. DP b. NP c. DP

D′ N′ D′

D◦ »NP« N◦ D◦ NP
the assignment the
N′

N◦
assignment
Chapter 6: Extending the X′ schema 206

Take Note

Given the structure in (9c), the traditional term “noun phrase” is a misnomer since noun
phrases are maximal projections of D rather than of N. Because the term “noun phrase”
is firmly established in usage, we continue to use it as an informal synonym for “DP”.
However, in order to avoid confusion, we will use the term “NP” only to refer to the sub-
constituent of a noun phrase that is the complement of a determiner. We will never use
“NP” to refer to an entire noun phrase (that is, a DP).

In the simplest case, the elementary tree for a noun consists of just the NP projection, as
in (9b). But as we have just seen, nouns, like verbs, can have both complements and specifiers.
For instance, depending on which of the noun phrases in (10) it appears in, criticism is associated
with one of the elementary trees in (11).

(10) a. They refuted the criticism.

b. They refuted the criticism of the proposal.
c. They refuted the committee’s criticism.
d. They refuted the committee’s criticism of the proposal.

(11) a. NP b. NP

N′ N′

N◦ N◦ »PP«
criticism criticism

In (10a), the phrase the criticism is derived in exactly the same way as the assignment in
(9)—by substituting the NP in (11a) as the complement of the determiner. In (11b), the noun
phrase containing criticism is derived as in (12). (The internal structure of prepositional phrases
is covered later on in the chapter; for the moment, we ignore it.)

(12) a. NP b. NP
N′ N′
N◦ »PP« N◦ PP
criticism criticism
of the proposal

Elementary tree for N (11b) Substitute theme argument

Chapter 6: Extending the X′ schema 207

c. DP
D′
D◦ NP
the
N′
N◦ PP
criticism
of the proposal

Substitute (12b) in elementary tree

for D

One of the reasons that it is compelling to treat traditional noun phrases2 as DPs is that it
allows for a natural way to explain the pattern that emerges in possessive noun phrases. A central
aspect of possessive noun phrases in Mainstream U.S. English is that the possessor (italicized in
the examples below) is itself a complete noun phrase: it can be a proper name, it can be a DP, and
it can even be a complex and informative DP.

(13) a. Langston’s criticism of the proposal.

b. the committee’s criticism of the proposal
c. the current and potential ongoing leader’s criticism of the proposal

So a possessive noun phrase requires a structure that embeds a full DP inside another DP.
But it also requires an approach that captures the fact that a possessive DP rules out the possibility
of determiner (e.g. a definite determiner or a demonstrative) to cooccur with the possessive.

(14) a. Langston’s criticism of the proposal.

b. * The Langston’s criticism of the proposal.
c. * That Langston’s criticism of the proposal.
d. * Langston’s the criticism of the proposal.
e. * Langston’s that criticism of the proposal.

We saw above that the possessor itself can contain a determiner, but here we use a proper name
as the possessor to demonstrate that the larger possessive DP itself has no way to incorporate a
determiner. Non-possessive noun phrases have no such problem incorporating determiner ele-
ments:

(15) a. The criticism of the proposal

b. This criticism of the proposal

We therefore see a complementary distribution of determiners (like a, the, this/that, etc)

with the possessive morpheme, suggesting that they are instances of the same grammatical cat-
egory. We can arrive at an analysis where English noun phrases containing possessive noun
Chapter 6: Extending the X′ schema 208

phrases, like (10c), require a possessive head ’s that is of the category D◦ . The elementary tree
for this head is shown in (16), containing two argument positions: one for the possessee (the
element being possessed) that is the NP complement of the possessive D◦ , and a position for the
possessor, the DP embedded in the specifier of the possessive DP.

(16) DP
»DP« D′
possessoR
D◦ »NP«
[poss] possessee
’s

This also readily allows for recursive possessive structures: the DP possessor in (16) can
itself be a possessive DP.

(17) a. [DP [DP The children’s mother]’s sister ] is a good friend of mine.
b. [DP [DP Lilly’s fur]’s texture ] is finer than I expected.

Notice that the possessive head is not a free morpheme. Recall from Chapter 5 that we posited
elementary trees headed by silent bound tense morphemes in order to allow us to represent Eng-
lish past and present tense sentences analogously to their future tense counterparts. In the same
spirit, we allow elementary trees headed by overt bound morphemes like ’s. In general, modern
syntactic theory is not terribly concerned with whether the heads of elementary trees are bound
or free morphemes, or silent or overt, as long as the trees allow us to provide maximally similar
and accurate representations for linguistically related phenomena.
Deriving (10d) involves substituting both the relevant arguments into the elementary trees
for the NP/DP, as outlined in (18).

(18) a. NP b. NP

N′ N′

N◦ »PP« N◦ PP
criticism criticism
of the proposal
Elementary tree for N
criticism Substitute theme argument
Chapter 6: Extending the X′ schema 209

c. DP

»DP« D′

D◦ NP
[poss]
’s N′

N◦ PP
criticism
of the proposal

Substitute (18b) into the elementary tree for a

possessive DP (16)

d. DP

DPi D′

the committee D◦ NP
[poss]
’s N′

N◦ PP
criticism
of the proposal

Substitute agent/possessor into Spec(DP)

The sentential counterpart of the noun phrase in (18d) is given in (19). As is evident,
apart from the labels for the syntactic categories, the two-layered structure for noun phrases
(NP, DP) presented here is analogous to the two-layered structure for sentences from Chapter 5
(VP, IP).
Chapter 6: Extending the X′ schema 210

(19) IP

DPi I′

the committee I◦ VP
will
V′

V◦ DP
criticize
the proposal

6.1.3 More on determiners

Subcategories of determiners
Like verbs and nouns, determiners have different selectional properties—they can be transitive
or intransitive (select for an object or not). For instance, the definite article the and the indefinite
article a(n) are obligatorily transitive, whereas the demonstratives this and that are optionally
so.

(20) a. I’ll buy { the, a } book.

b. * I’ll buy { the, a }.

(21) a. I’ll buy { this, that } book.

b. I’ll buy { this, that }.

Certain ordinary pronouns pattern just like demonstratives, as shown in (22), and so we will treat
them, too, as optionally transitive determiners.

(22) a. we Americans, you fool(s)

b. we, you

Finally, some ordinary pronouns behave like obligatorily intransitive determiners, as shown in
(23).

(23) a. I, he, she, it, they

b. * I idiot, he fool, she linguist, it piece of junk, they traitors

In this connection, recall the warning in Chapter 1 that the term “pronoun” is potentially
misleading. It suggests that pronouns are a subclass of nouns. If that were so, then pronouns
should combine with articles and demonstratives in the same way that other nouns do. In fact,
however, pronouns behave exactly like complete noun phrases in this regard, as shown in (24).
The facts in (24) thus provide strong evidence for the analysis of pronouns as determiners just
presented.
Chapter 6: Extending the X′ schema 211

(24) a. D + noun: the people, this woman, that addressee

b. D + noun phrase (= DP): * the these people, this the woman, that the addressee
c. D + pronoun (= pro-DP): * the they, this she, that you

The argument is from simple reasoning based on distribution: pronouns have the distribution of
DPs, not of NPs: NPs can co-occur with determiners, but pronouns cannot. Elementary trees for
the various types of determiners that we have just discussed are given in (25).

(25)
a. DP b. DP c. DP

D′ D′ D′

D◦ »NP« D◦ D◦ »NP«
an this this

Obligatorily transitive D Optionally transitive D

d. DP e. DP f. DP

D′ D′ D′

D◦ D◦ D◦ »NP«
he we we

Obligatorily intransitive D Optionally transitive D

Silent determiners
As shown in (26), plural indefinite count nouns and indefinite mass nouns are apparently not
accompanied by an article in English, in contrast to their singular or definite counterparts.

(26) a. cars, apples; rice

b. a car, an apple; the rice

However, we assume for conceptual reasons that the examples in (26a) contain a silent article
that is semantically roughly comparable to the unstressed some in I would like some apples and
some rice. The elementary tree is shown in (27).
Chapter 6: Extending the X′ schema 212

(27) DP

D′

D◦ »NP«
∅some

We have two reasons for assuming the existence of silent determiners. First, this assump-
tion allows us to minimize the difference between English and a language like Spanish, where the
indefinite article is overt in the same circumstances. The resulting correspondence between Eng-
lish and Spanish determiners is shown in Table 6.1; the plural indefinite articles are in boldface.
For simplicity, we give only the masculine forms of the Spanish determiners.

English Spanish
sg pl sg pl
Demonstrative this these este estos
that those ese esos
Definite article the the el los
Indefinite article a(n) ∅indf.pl un unos

Table 6.1: English and Spanish determiners

Second, assuming the silent determiner allows us to maintain that all noun phrases are
DPs. Sentences like (28) can then all be derived using the elementary trees in (29).

(28) a. Some butlers might bring some tea.

b. Some butlers might bring tea.
c. Butlers might bring some tea.
d. Butlers might bring tea.

(29) IP

»DP« I′

I◦ VP

V′

V◦ »DP«
bring

We show the full structure for the apparently articleless noun phrase butlers in (30). The
structure for tea is analogous.
Chapter 6: Extending the X′ schema 213

(30) DP

D′

D◦ NP
∅some
N′

N◦
butlers

(31) combines the trees for all four sentences in (28) into a single representation.

(31) IP

DPi I′

D′ I◦ VP
might
{ D◦ } NP V′
some
∅some N′ V◦ DP
bring
N◦ D′
butlers
{ D◦ } NP
some
∅some N′

N◦
tea

In principle, we could take an alternative tack. If it were our goal to assign the least pos-
sible amount of structure (that is, the structures with the fewest nodes) to each sentence in (28),
we would reject the silent determiner in (27) and represent butlers as a bare NP, as in (32) (and
analogously for tea).

(32) NP

N′

N◦
butlers

The alternative structure under discussion for (28d) is given in (33).

Chapter 6: Extending the X′ schema 214

(33) IP

NPi I′

N′ I◦ VP
[pst]
N◦ V′
butlers
V◦ NP
brought
N′

N◦
tea

Clearly, the tree in (33) is simpler than its counterpart in (31) in the sense of containing
fewer nodes. However, this simplicity comes at the price of a veritable explosion in the number
of elementary trees in the grammar, since every argument position that can be filled by a noun
phrase would need to be associated with two elementary trees (one with a DP substitution node,
and one with an NP substitution node). For instance, instead of the single elementary trees for
might and bring, we would need an additional elementary tree for each that has an NP substitution
node and not just a DP substitution node. Every head that selects for an argument would therefore
need to select for both an NP and a DP.

(34) a. VP b. VP

V′ V′

V◦ »DP« V◦ »NP«
bring bring

c. IP d. IP

»DP« I′ »NP« I′

I◦ »VP« I◦ »VP«
might might

This result seems unappealing on computational grounds, as every instance of a noun

phrase requires additional elementary trees. We also miss an insight in doing this—noun phrases
without determiners share a syntactic distribution with noun phrases with determiners, and our
model naturally accommodates this better by treating them all as DPs.
More fundamentally, requiring that we simplify representations of individual sentences can
end up with results that are inconsistent with the Chomskyan paradigm of language. Why? From
a Chomskyan perspective, what syntactic theory attempts to model and understand is the mental
Chapter 6: Extending the X′ schema 215

capacity to generate sentences: what is Universal Grammar? A reasonable working hypothesis is

that the best model for this capacity is the simplest possible grammar. So striving to cut down on
the numbers of nodes in the representations of sentences can come at the expense of complicating
our model of UG itself, trading simpler trees for a more complex theory overall (which we deem
an undesirable result).

6.1.4 Modification and related issues

N′ as target of adjunction
As we noted in our introductory review of the parallels between noun phrases and sentences
in § 6.1.1, nouns and verbs can be modified in similar ways. In (35), for instance, the same
prepositional phrase in the hospital modifies the noun stay and the morphologically related verb
stayed.

(35) a. Mike’s stay in the hospital

b. Mike will stay in the hospital.

Extending the approach to representing modification introduced in Chapter 5, (§ 5.3.1) we arrive

at the structures of nominal modification shown in (36a). This structure is clearly analogous to
the structure for the corresponding sentence in (36b).

(36) a. DP b. IP

DPi D′ DPi I′

Mike D◦ NP Mike I◦ VP
’s will
N′ V′

N′ PP V′ PP

N◦ in the hospital V◦ in the hospital

stay stay
Chapter 6: Extending the X′ schema 216

Leftward adjunction
So far, we have discussed modifiers that follow the head, whose representation involves rightward
adjunction. Structures for examples like (37), where the modifier precedes the head it modifies,
can be derived by leftward adjunction, as shown in (38).

(37) a. the chimpanzee’s nervous grimace

b. The chimpanzee nervously grimaced.

(38) a. DP

DPi D′

the chimpanzee D◦ NP
’s
N′

AdjP N′

nervous N◦
grimace
b. IP

DPi I′

the chimpanzee I◦ VP
[pst]
V′

AdvP V′

nervously V◦
grimaced

As an aside, notice that in both trees in (38) the complement position of the main lexical
head (V◦ /N◦ ) is empty. Part of what makes the AdjP/AdvP an adjunct in our model is that it is
not the sibling of the head, so it is crucial to leave the complement position empty in order for
the modifier to be appropriately represented as an adjunct.
Chapter 6: Extending the X′ schema 217

One substitution
As discussed in Chapter 5, do so substitution allows us to distinguish between complements and
adjuncts in the verbal system. A similar diagnostic is available in the nominal system—one sub-
stitution, which is illustrated in (39).

(39) a. this book on the floor and that one

b. this book on the floor and that one on the table

In the most natural interpretation of (39a), one is interpreted as book on the floor. In (39b), on the
other hand, one is interpreted as simply book. We can represent these facts by assuming that the
first conjunct in both cases has the structure in (40).

(40) DP

D′

D◦ NP
the
N′

N′ PP

N◦ on the floor
book

According to (40), the noun book has no complement, and the PP on the floor is an adjunct. The
pro-form one substitutes for instances of N′ , just as do so substitutes for instances of V′ . One
substitutes for the higher N′ in (39a), and for the lower N′ in (39b).
As in the case of V′ , adjunction to N′ can apply more than once, yielding multiply recursive
structures like (41).
Chapter 6: Extending the X′ schema 218

(41) DP

D′

D◦ NP
this
N′

N′ PP

with a broken binding

N′ PP

N◦ on the floor
book

Restrictions on one substitution

A cautionary note is in order about one substitution. Although in principle one can substitute for
any instance of N′ , it is subject to two restrictions, which are important to keep in mind when
using one substitution as a diagnostic for syntactic structure. The first restriction, which makes
sense given the etymological connection of the pro-form to the homonymous number word, is
that one can substitute only for count nouns, as illustrated in (42).

(42) a. I prefer this { bed, chair, sofa, table }, and you prefer that one.
b. * I prefer this furniture, and you prefer that one.

A second restriction is that one cannot immediately follow the indefinite article, a cardinal num-
ber, a possessive noun phrase, or (for many speakers) the plural demonstratives these and those.
Whatever the exact source of this restriction is (in some cases it is difficult to derive from the
etymological connection just mentioned), the restriction is very superficial, since an intervening
word renders the ungrammatical (a) examples in (43)–(46) grammatical.3

(43) Indefinite article

a. * I bought a book, and you bought a one, too.
b. I bought a blue book, and you bought a red one.

(44) Cardinal number

a. * I bought { two , ten } books, and you bought { two, ten } ones, too.
b. I bought { two, ten } blue books, and you bought { two, ten } red ones.

(45) Possessive
a. * I like { Mary’s, her } book, and you like { John’s, his } one.
b. I like { Mary’s, her } blue shirt, and you like { Mary’s, her } red one.
Chapter 6: Extending the X′ schema 219

(46) Plural demonstrative

a. * I like these books, and you like those ones.
b. I like these blue books, and you like those red ones.

Structural ambiguity
Having introduced N′ as a possible target of modification, we are now in a position to associate
structurally ambiguous sentences like (47) with two distinct syntactic representations.

(47) They ate the pizza in the living room.

(47) has two interpretations, which can be paraphrased as in (48).

(48) a. Verbal modifier interpretation:

It was in the living room that they ate the pizza (though the pizza may have started
out elsewhere).
b. Nominal modifier interpretation:
It was the pizza in the living room that they ate (though perhaps they then took it and
ate it elsewhere).

On the interpretation in (48a), the prepositional phrase in the living room modifies the verb ate,
and (47) has the structure in (49a). On the interpretation in (48b), the prepositional phrase mod-
ifies the noun pizza, and the sentence has the structure in (49b).

(49) a. IP

DPi I′

they I◦ VP
[pst]
V′

V′ PP

V◦ DP in the living room

ate
D′

D◦ NP
the
N′

N◦
pizza
Chapter 6: Extending the X′ schema 220

b. IP

DPi I′

they I◦ VP
[pst]
V′

V◦ DP
ate
D′

D◦ NP
the
N′

N′ PP

N◦ in the living room

pizza

The structures in (49) are consistent with the results of relevant constituenthood tests. For
instance, substituting the ordinary pronoun it for the pizza and substituting did so for ate the
pizza yields (50a) and (50b), respectively.

(50) a. They ate it in the living room.

b. They did so in the living room.

In both sentences, the prepositional phrase is unambiguously interpreted as a verbal modifier, as

expected given that the pizza and ate the pizza are represented as constituents in (49a), but not in
(49b).
Conversely, in the question-answer pair in (51), the prepositional phrase is unambiguously
associated with a nominal modifier interpretation. Again, this is expected, since the pizza in the
living room is represented as a constituent in (49b), but not in (49a).

(51) What did they eat? The pizza in the living room.
Chapter 6: Extending the X′ schema 221

The complement-adjunct distinction in the nominal system.

Given the semantic parallel between the sentence in (52a) and the noun phrase in (52b), it is
reasonable to treat the of phrase in (52b) as a complement of the noun author.

(52) a. This woman authors murder mysteries.

b. this author of murder mysteries

That is, the elementary tree for author needed to derive (52b) is as in (53a), and the structure for
the entire noun phrase is (53b).

(53) a. NP b. DP

N′ D′

N◦ »PP« D◦ NP
author this
N′

N◦ PP
author
of murder mysteries

Since one is analogous to do so in substituting for intermediate rather than for lexical pro-
jections, we expect the contrast between (54) and (55), and this accurately reflects the judgment
of many speakers.4

(54) a. ✔ This woman authors murder mysteries, and that man does so, too.
b. ✔ this author of murder mysteries and that one

(55) a. * This woman authors murder mysteries, and that man does so nature guides.
b. * this author of murder mysteries and that one of nature guides

Both complements and adjuncts function semantically as restrictors, that is, content that
constrains what/who the DP refers to (the set of authors of murder mysteries is a subset of the
set of authors). Therefore, there won’t be an obvious semantic clue for speakers whether their
grammar differs from that of other speakers. The only clue will come from the difference with
respect to one substitution judgments, and any such differences are not going to be salient in
everyday life.
Chapter 6: Extending the X′ schema 222

Adjective phrases 6.2

In this section, we discuss the structure of adjective phrases, beginning with examples like those
in (56) and (57), where the prepositional phrase following the adjective is optional.

(56) a. They are proud.

b. They are proud of their grandchild.

(57) a. They are happy.

b. They are happy with their car.

Recall from Chapter 3 that the pro-form so substitutes for adjective phrases. More specifi-
cally, examples like those in (58) and (59) allow us to conclude that the of phrase is a complement
of proud in (58), but that the with phrase is an adjunct of happy in (59).

(58) a. ✔ They are proud, and we are so, too.

b. ✔ They are proud of their grandchild, and we are so, too.
c. * They are proud of their grandchild, and we are so of him, too.

(59) a. ✔ They are happy, and we are so, too.

b. ✔ They are happy with their car, and we are so, too.
c. ✔ They are happy with their car, and we are so with our bikes.

We can represent these facts by associating the two adjectives with the elementary trees in
(60) and by stating that so substitutes for instances of A′ . (We generally use “A” for “adjective”. We
always use “Adv” for “adverb”, and we use “Adj” where the distinction between the two categories
is at issue.)

(60)
a. AP b. AP c. AP

A′ A′ A′

A◦ A◦ A◦ »PP«
happy proud proud

Obligatorily intransitive Optionally transitive

Most adjectives in English, like the two just discussed, are optionally or obligatorily intran-
sitive. A rare case of an obligatorily transitive adjective is fond.5 The contrast in (61) is evidence
for the complement status of the of phrase (recall from Chapter 5 that obligatory syntactic de-
pendents are complements), and that status is confirmed by the results of so substitution.
Chapter 6: Extending the X′ schema 223

(61) a. * They are fond.

b. ✔ They are fond of their grandchild.
(62) a. * They are fond of their grandchild, and we are so of him, too.
b. ✔ They are fond of their grandchild, and we are so, too.

In view of the facts in (61) and (62), fond is associated with the single elementary tree in (63).

(63) AP

A′

A◦ »PP«
fond

Obligatorily
transitive

Prepositional phrases 6.3

The syntactic category P corresponds closely to the traditional part of speech called “preposition”,
but is not identical to it. We address two differences between the syntactic category and the
traditional part of speech in the next two subsections.

Take Note

Following standard usage in the syntax literature, we sometimes use the term “preposi-
tion” to refer to the syntactic category P in contexts where the difference is either clear or
immaterial.
Chapter 6: Extending the X′ schema 224

6.3.1 Transitivity
The etymology of the term “preposition” ( < Latin prae ‘before’ and positio ‘position’) implies that
all prepositions should precede a complement, and English does in fact have a number of obliga-
torily transitive Ps, some of which are illustrated in (64). The asterisk (*) outside the parenthesized
material is a convention to indicate that the parenthesized material is obligatory.

(64) a. They drove from *(Boston).

b. He’s the inventor of *(that gizmo).
c. She dove into *(the water).
d. They jumped onto *(the bandwagon).

But X′ theory leads us to expect that there should also be intransitive Ps, and as the exam-
ples in (65) show, this expectation is fulfilled.

(65) a. I’ve never seen him before (this meeting).

b. Are you for (the proposal) or against (it)?
c. The bird flew { in, out } (the window).
d. It’s time to get { off, on } (the train).
e. They jumped over (the ditch).
f. We’ve been fast friends ever since (that time).
g. She came to (her senses).
h. Have you looked underneath (the sombrero)?

In traditional grammar, Ps that are used intransitively are known as adverbs or particles,
rather than as prepositions, but this terminology goes against the spirit of X′ theory, which seeks
to maximize the parallels among categories. From our point of view, there is as little reason for
the syntactic category of a lexical item to depend on its transitivity in the case of a P like since as
there is in the case of a V like eat. In both cases, the intransitive variant has a semantic argument
that is not expressed in the syntax, but is supplied in the course of interpretation, based on the
discourse context.
The elementary trees for of and over are shown in (66), and the full structures for the PPs
headed by them in (64) and (65) are shown in (67). (67c) comes out as identical to (66c).

(66) a. PP b. PP c. PP

P′ P′ P′

P◦ »DP« P◦ »DP« P◦
of over over
Chapter 6: Extending the X′ schema 225

(67) a. PP b. PP c. PP

P′ P′ P′

P◦ DP P◦ DP P◦
of over over
that gizmo the ditch

6.3.2 Clausal complements of prepositions

As we saw in Chapter 5, verbs can take either noun phrase complements or clausal complements.
(68) gives a further example.

(68) a. They reported the monkey’s dislike of camphor.

b. They reported that the monkey dislikes camphor.

The examples of transitive Ps discussed so far have all had noun phrase complements, but given
the parallel between verbs and prepositions concerning transitivity, we might expect Ps to allow
clausal complements as well. Once again, this expectation is borne out, as shown in (69).6

(69) a. Noun phrase complement: { after, before, since } the war

b. Clausal complement: { after, before, since } the war ended

The question now arises of what syntactic category clausal complements of prepositions
belong to. At first glance, examples like (69b) suggest that the answer to this question is IP. The
elementary tree for after in (69b) would then be as in (70), and the elementary trees for before
and since would be analogous.
(70) PP

P′

P◦ »IP«
after

Not like this!

There is good reason to believe, however, that clausal complements (specifically, finite
clausal complements) of P are CPs rather than IPs. As illustrated in (71a), the clausal complement
of after and prepositions like it would be headed by a silent counterpart of the complementizer
that, resulting in (71b) as the structure for after the war ended (for simplicity, the internal structure
of IP is omitted).
Chapter 6: Extending the X′ schema 226

(71) a. PP b. PP

P′ P′

P◦ »CP« P◦ CP
after after
C◦ IP
∅that
the war ended
There are several empirical arguments for preferring the elementary tree in (71a) over the
one in (70). First, at least one preposition in English allows—indeed, requires—CP complements
headed by an overt complementizer, as shown in (72).
(72) They differ in *(that) they hold sharply opposing views on educational reform.
A second reason for preferring (71a) over (70) is that sentences like (73), with an overt
complementizer, occurred freely in Middle English (and are still acceptable for some speakers of
Modern English). Some naturally-occurring examples are given in (74).

Extra Info
The thorn character (þ) was borrowed from Old Norse (it is still used in Icelandic) and used
in Old and Middle English where we use <th> today. The yogh character (ȝ) was used in
Middle English where we use <g> or <y>.

(73) * { after, before, since } that the war ended

(74) a. And after þat þis bataile was done, þe Britons assemblede ham
‘And after this battle was over, the Britons assembled (themselves).’
(PPCME2, cmbrut3,100.3080)
b. Ȝit bifore that Dauith cam to Jerusalem, a new debate roos bitwixe the men of Israel
and the men of Juda
‘Yet before David came to Jerusalem, a new debate arose between the men of Israel
and the men of Judah.’ (PPCME2, cmpurvey,I,11.415)
c. Now, sith that i have toold yow of which folk ye sholde been conseilled, now wol I
teche yow which conseil ye oghte to eschewe.
‘Now, since I have told you what kind of people you should be counseled by, now I
will teach you which advice you ought to eschew.’ (PPCME2, cmctmeli,223.C1.247)
Finally, analyzing clausal complements of prepositions as CPs allows us to treat preposi-
tions in English in the same way as prepositions in other languages such as French, where it is
clear that the clausal complements are CP complements.7
(75) a. ✔ {après, depuis, pendant} la danse
after since during the dance
‘{ after, since, during } the dance’
Chapter 6: Extending the X′ schema 227

b. ✔ {après, depuis} que l’ enfant a dansé; pendant que l’ enfant dansait

after since that the child has danced while that the child was.dancing
‘{ after, since } the child danced; while the child was dancing’
c. * { après, depuis } l’enfant a dansé; pendant l’enfant dansait

A broader conclusion that we don’t have time to defend here is that all finite IPs are embedded
in CPs, generally.

Crosslinguistic variation in headedness 6.4

Recall the overall project: we are building a model of Universal Grammar.

(76) Universal Grammar (UG)

The universal cognitive mechanisms that generate human language, as discoverable
through language grammars.

So while we investigate the mental grammars of individual speakers’ individual languages, what
we are attempting to do overall is use those grammars to theorize about what is universal about
human language. What are the universal properties of human cognition that allow for all human
languages to exist?
There is of course a very important point that is thankfully not lost on most linguists:
languages are in fact different from each other. Syntacticians use the notion of a parameter
to capture this. Parameters are points of variation between language. At earlier stages of the
generative syntax tradition, the model was referred to as “Principles and Parameters”, where the
principles were the properties of Universal Grammar that were universal, and parameters were
the properties of universal grammar that varied between languages.
Traditionally parameters have been thought of in the metaphor of a switch, like a light
switch—they are binary (on or of) and all existed cognitively in some kind of literal sense. Cur-
rently there are many people who conceive of parameters as something more like points of un-
derspecification. That is to say: principles say what must be the case for human language, and
wherever the principles don’t have an opinion, languages can evolve in any way that is other-
wise consistent with UG. No matter how parameters are conceived of from a cognitive perspec-
tive, within syntactic theory parameters are ways that we state (with precision) what kinds of
syntactic variation occur between languages.
Chapter 6: Extending the X′ schema 228

(77) X′ -schema
XP
specifier position → X′
X′ adjuncts (additional adjunct levels are possible)
X◦ complements

The components of X′ -syntax are defined hierarchically, not by their linear order. So we can
summarize the defining characteristics of complements, adjuncts, and specifiers as in (78).

(78) X′ -schema
• Complements: siblings of heads
• Adjuncts: siblings of intermediate projections and children of intermediate projec-
tions
• Specifiers: siblings of intermediate projections and children of maximal projections

Notably, trees that adhere to (78) can look quite different from (77). So the schematic in
(79) is just as faithful to the X′ schema, but produces a very different word order.

(79) Still the X′ -schema

XP
X′ ← specifier position
adjuncts X′
complements X◦

And any permutation of these orderings is consistent with the X′ schema as well. The
model we are building has strict restrictions on the hierarchical relationships between different
kinds of syntactic elements, but says nothing specific about linear order. So one of the first areas
of human language to be understood in the context of parameterization (though certainly not the
last) is the relative order of components of the X′ schema. Here we illustrate with heads and their
complements.

6.4.1 Head-final and head-initial patterns

As illustrated in (80)–(86), heads in English precede their complements, and English is therefore
said to be a head-initial language. The headedness of a lexical item (or a category or an entire
language) always refers to the order of heads and complements. In other words, headedness
is determined with respect to the intermediate projection of elementary trees, not with respect
to the maximal projection. For instance, English determiners can be medial in their maximal
projection (the possessive morpheme ’s must be preceded by a DP in Spec(DP)), and English
verbs and modals must be medial in their maximal projections, but they all count as head-initial
because they are all instances where heads precede their complements.

(80) English head-initial verbs

Chapter 6: Extending the X′ schema 229

a. They [V′ pursued [DP their goal ] ].

b. She [V′ submitted [DP her application ] ].

(81) English head-initial Inflection

a. They [I′ should [VP pursue their goal ] ].
b. She [I′ could [VP submit her application ] ].

(82) English head-initial complementizers

a. They agreed [C′ that [IP they should pursue their goal ] ].
b. She wondered [C′ if [I′ she could submit her application ] ].

(83) English nouns precede their complements

a. the [N′ pursuit [PP of their goal ] ]
b. the [N′ submission [PP of her application ] ]
c. Lisa’s [N′ pride [PP in her work ] ]

(84) English determiners precede associated NPs

a. [D′ the [NP pursuit of their goal ] ]
b. [D′ the [NP submission of her application ] ]
c. Lisa [D′ ’s [NP pride in her work ] ]

(85) English adjectives precede their complements

a. She is [A′ proud [PP of her work ] ].
b. He is [A′ fond [PP of his children ] ].

(86) English prepositions precede their complements

a. [P′ over [DP the next five years ] ]
b. [P′ with [DP great fanfare ] ]

Universal Grammar by no means prescribes head-initial phrase structure. Rather, many

languages exhibit consistently head-final phrase structure; two such languages are Japanese
and Korean. The examples in (87)–(92) are from Korean. In order to avoid using “head-final
preposition”, which is an etymological contradiction in terms, linguists have coined the term
postposition for the Ps in (92). The term adposition is a cover term for prepositions and post-
positions (that is, for Ps regardless of headedness). Examples for I and D are missing because
Korean has neither overt modals of the English sort nor overt articles; the abbreviations in the
glosses are explained in the notes,8 but are not crucial for present purposes.

(87) Korean head-final verb phrases

a. 그들 -은 목적 -을 추구하 -였 -다.
kutul -un [V′ [DP mokcek -ul ] chukwuha ] -yess -ta.
3pl -top goal -acc pursue -pst -decl
‘They pursued their goal.’
Chapter 6: Extending the X′ schema 230

b. 그 -는 지원서 -를 제출하 -였 -다.

ku -nun [V′ [DP ciwonse -lul ] ceychwulha ] -yess -ta.
3sg -top application -acc submit -pst -decl
‘They.sg submitted their.sg application.’

(88) Korean head-final complementizer

그들 -은 목적 -을 추구해야 한 ‑다고 통의하 -였 -다.
[C′ [IP kutul -un mokcek -ul chukwuhayya ha-n ] -tako ] tonguyha -yess -ta.
3pl -top goal -acc pursue must-pRs that agree -pst -decl
‘They agreed that they should pursue their goal.’

(89) Another Korean head-final complementizer

그 -는 지원서 -를 제출해도 되 ‑는지
[
C′ [IP ku -nun ciwonse -lul ceychwulhayto toy ] -nunci ]
3.sg -top application -acc submit can if
궁금하 -였 -다.
kwungkumha -yess -ta
wonder -pst -decl
‘They.sg wondered if they.sg could submit their.sg application.’

(90) Korean nouns following complements

a. 그들 -의 목적의 추구
kutul -uy [N′ [DP mokcek -uy ] chukwu ]
they -gen goal.gen pursuit
‘their pursuit of their goal’
b. 그 -의 지원서 -의 제출
ku -uy [N′ [DP ciwonse -uy ] ceychwul ]
3.sg -gen application -gen submission
‘their.sg submission of their.sg application’
c. 경림 -의 일 -에 대한 자부심
kyenglim -uy [N′ [PP il -ey tayhan ] capwusim ]
Kyenglim -gen work -in regarding pride
‘Kyenglim’s pride in their.sg work’

(91) Korean head-final PPs

a. 다음 오 년 동안
[P′ [DP taum o nyen ] tongan ]
next five years over
‘over the next five years’
b. 대 팡파르 ‑와 함께
[P′ [DP tay phangphalu ] -wa hamkkey ]
great fanfare -with
‘with great fanfare’
Chapter 6: Extending the X′ schema 231

(92) Korean adjectives following head nouns

a. 일 -이 자랑스러 -운 사람
[A′ [DP il -i ] calangsulew -un ] saram
work -nom proud -mod person
‘a person proud of their.sg work’
b. 아이들 -이 좋 -은 사람
[A′ [DP aitul -i ] coh -un ] saram
children -nom fond -mod person
‘a person fond of their.sg children’

6.4.2 Harmonic and disharmonic headedness

Languages tend to be harmonic with respect to headedness; that is, they tend to be consistently
head-initial or head-final across syntactic categories. This is what is exemplified by the English
and Korean examples above, and it is very common for languages to pattern like this. However,
in certain languages, some syntactic categories project head-initial trees and others project head-
final ones.
Such mixed phrase structure is found, for instance, in many languages in West and Central
Africa. One example is Tunen, a Bantu language spoken in Cameroon (Zone A).9

(93) Context: You enter the room and see a broken window. Someone announces…
Biə́ lɛ a ná [VP itúbə́ sána ] Tunen
1.Pierre sbj.agR pst window break
‘Pierre broke the window.’ (Kerr 2024b, 212)

Even this single example gives a very good illustration of mixed-headedness. We have bracketed
the verb phrase in the example above. If we assume that the inflection of past tense emerges on I◦,
we can see that the verb phrase follows tense: that is, IP is head-initial, where the head (bearing
tense) precedes its complement (the verb phrase).

(94) IP

DP I′

Biə́ lɛ I◦ VP
a ná
itúbə́ sána

At the same time, the story is different inside the verb phrase. Clearly in (93), the head (the
verb sána ‘break’) follows its complement (the object itúbə́ ‘window’). The Tunen verb phrase
therefore appears to be head-final:
Chapter 6: Extending the X′ schema 232

(95) VP

V′

DP V◦
sána
itúbə́

Future tense illustrates the same pattern, with the future tense morpheme preceding its VP com-
plement.

(96) Samuɛ́lɛ a ŋɔ [VP ɔ-lɛ́sa nɛ́á-aka ] Tunen

1.Samuel agR fut 3-rice eat-duR
‘Samuel will eat rice tomorrow.’ (this future tense is the ‘tomorrow’ future)
(Kerr 2024a, 326)

Both demonstratives and prepositions precede their respective complements, so we see

Dem-N word order (97) and P-DP word order (98).

(97) tɔ́ɔyɛ tɔ-banána tɔ-tɛ́L tɛ́á tɔ-fítitiə tɔ́-fandɛ́

dem nc-banana agR-small agR-black agR-two
‘these two small black bananas’ (Kerr 2024b, 246)

(98) Context: Where are you?

Mɛ lɛa [PP ɔ nɛ-oní ].
agR be pRep nc-market
‘I am at the market.’ (Kerr 2024a, 102)

Head nouns, however, tend to precede modifiers of those nouns, as we can see in (97).
Head nouns likewise precede their complements in Tunen, distinct from verbs following their
complements.

(99) Context: “They—they are—I see three people here.”

Mmh. Bá lɛa ɔ ɛ-ndínə́ yɛ bɔ-lɛa.
mmh agR be pRep nc-foot assoc nc-tree
‘Mmh. They’re at the foot of the tree.’ (Elisabeth Kerr, personal communication)

Complement clauses introduce some additional complexity. Inside the complement clause,
we see the familiar head-initial IP and head-final VP. But in the main clause, the CP complement of
manya ‘know’ follows the verb, in an exception to the head-final VP pattern we saw above.
H
(100) Mɛ ndɔ manya [CP ɔwá Matɛ́ŋɛ a ka hɛ-əfulə fana-aka ].
sm.1sg pRes know comp Martin agR past book read-duR
‘I know that Martin has read the book.’ (Kerr 2024b, 208)

And in the embedded CP itself (bracketed in (100)), we see that the complementizer precedes the
IP it is associated with, suggesting that CP itself is head initial, in contrast to Korean CPs in (88)
and (89) above.
Chapter 6: Extending the X′ schema 233

Tunen shows much more complexity in word order based on what is being emphasized and
de-emphasized in a sentence (as is the case for many languages). But as an initial description, it
is clear that headedness need not be completely harmonic among all categories in a language. It
is certainly common to see patterns like Korean or English that are relatively consistent in their
headedness, but it is also not surprising among human languages to find patterns like in Tunen,
where some projections are head-initial but others are head-final.

Encountering new grammatical categories 6.5

As mentioned in Chapter 2, languages can vary in the particular inventory (and properties) of
grammatical categories that they possess. What was presented so far here has a very universal-
ist bias (“languages work like this”); how do we deal with potentially unique kinds of syntactic
properties in languages we are investigating? First, we will start with some relevant assump-
tions:

(101) Important X′ -theoretic assumptions:

a. All heads (X◦ ) project to phrases (XP)
b. All category information resides on a syntactic head.
c. All categories project full X′ -structure.
d. Where an XP is located in the syntactic structure is determined empirically—where
do the data suggest it is located?

Given these assumptions, we are given a toolkit for building an analysis for a novel (to us)
grammatical category. As an illustration, we work through this process with a category that is
novel to us thus far in this textbook: negation.
As is common across languages, English has a morphosyntactic construction—negation—
that inverts the truth conditions of a sentence. So (102a) is true in exactly the opposite circum-
stances that (102b) is true in.

(102) a. The children will leave tomorrow.

b. The children will not leave tomorrow.

As a baseline assumption, negation is a grammatical category with predictable properties of

its own, and should be its own syntactic head. We can call it Neg◦ , which projects to a NegP.

(103) NegP

Neg′

Neg◦
Chapter 6: Extending the X′ schema 234

Where does it sit syntactically, though? We can look at it empirically. (102) suggests that
English negation sits right between IP and the VP; if this is true, other elements that are in IP
should precede negation as well. (104) suggests that this is true.

(104) a. The children might not leave tomorrow.

b. The children should not leave tomorrow.

We can therefore represent the structure of English negation in an abstract sentence structure as
in (105):

(105) IP

I′

I◦ NegP

Neg′

Neg◦ VP

We don’t mean to imply that any initial analysis based on basic empirical patterns will turn out to
be correct; it is the pattern of normal science for a researcher to propose a structure that is later
contested/revised as additional researchers identify additional relevant data. So the appropriate
analysis in the end is a matter of what holds up to empirical scrutiny. But this is the general ana-
lytical approach that the X′ schema makes available: we expect any new grammatical category X
to project a full XP, and where that XP sits in a sentence depends on what the empirical evidence
suggests.

New Empirical Observations

▶ head-initial and head-final patterns

▶ harmonic and disharmonic headedness

Components of the Theoretical Model

▶ New phrase types:

▷ NP
▷ AdjP
▷ PP
▷ NegP
 Chapter 6: Extending the X′ schema 235

▶ Important X′ -theoretic assumptions:

• All heads (X◦ ) project to phrases (XP)
• All category information resides on a syntactic head.
• All categories project full X′ -structure.

Notes 6.6
1. Sentences and noun phrases also exhibit certain differences. First, arguments and modifiers are not always expressed
in exactly the same way across the two categories. For instance, the agent argument is expressed as an ordinary
noun phrase in a sentence like (1a), but as a possessive noun phrase in a noun phrase like (1b). In a sentence, the
theme argument is expressed as a noun phrase, but in a noun phrase, it must be part of a prepositional phrase,
usually an of -phrase in English. Finally, although verbs and nouns can both be modified by prepositional phrases,
verbs are modified by adverbs, whereas nouns are modified by adjectives (with some exceptions in both directions).
In connection with this last difference, notice that adverbs can precede or follow the verb they modify, whereas
adjectives (in English) are ordinarily restricted to prenominal position.

(i) Adverb
a. The kids regularly donate their old toys.
b. The kids donate their old toys regularly.

(ii) Adjective
a. the kids’ regular donation of their old toys.
b. *The kids’ donation their old toys regular.

A further and even more fundamental difference between sentences and noun phrases concerns the subject
requirement. As we saw in Chapter 4, all sentences require a syntactic subject, even when it does not correspond to
a semantic argument, as is evident from the contrast between (iii) and (iv).

(iii) a. ✔ It appears that the manuscript has been found.

b. ✔There exists a solution.

(iv) a. *Appears that the manuscript has been found.

b. * Exists a solution.

By contrast, noun phrases never require a subject. For instance, the agent argument of a noun can be expressed, but
it needn’t be, as shown in (v).10

(v) a. ✔ the committee’s criticism of the proposal

b. ✔ the criticism of the proposal

What is even more striking is that sentences with expletive subjects have no noun phrase counterparts. As
(vii) shows, the very expletive expressions that are obligatory in (iii) are ungrammatical in noun phrases. Notice also
the related contrast in (vi); the construction in (vi.a)—so-called raising—is discussed in Chapter 11.
 Chapter 6: Extending the X′ schema 236

(vi) a. ✔ The manuscript appears to have been found.

b. * the manuscript’s appearance to have been found.

(vii) a. *it(s) appearance that the manuscript has been found

b. *there(’s) existence of a solution

2. We borrow the term “traditional noun phrase” from Željko Bošković to describe the constituent commonly referred
to as a noun phrase irrespective of its underlying analysis.

3. More evidence for the idiosyncratic character of the constraint against (49a) comes from the acceptability of (6.6) (at
least in formal registers) (thanks to Sonali Mishra for drawing our attention to such examples).

(i) such a one

4. Some speakers, however, accept (55b), or at least do not completely reject it. How can we make sense of this variation
among speakers’ judgments? Recall that complements of nouns, unlike those of verbs, are always expressed as
prepositional phrases. This means that the evidence whether a particular phrase is a complement or an adjunct is
murkier in the case of nouns than in the case of verbs, both for children acquiring the language and for adult speakers.
A further, probably related, complication is that even nouns that are morphologically derived from obligatorily
transitive verbs are themselves optionally intransitive (for instance, compare consume, destroy, employ with consumer,
destroyer, employer). Moreover, the intransitive use of these nouns might be more frequent than their transitive use.
As a result, the mental grammar of some speakers might include only the intransitive elementary tree in (i), and not
the transitive elementary tree in (53a). Such speakers would have no way of deriving the structure in (53b), but they
would be able to derive the alternative structure in (105b) by adjoining the of phrase, rather than by substituting
it.

(i) a. NP b. DP

N′ D′

N D NP
author this
N′ PP

of murder mysteries
N′

N
author

For such speakers, author in (55b) would be an N′ , rather than an N, and so they would accordingly accept
(55b).
Notice furthermore that the intransitive elementary tree in (i) is available even for speakers whose mental
grammar includes the transitive elementary tree in (53a), since all speakers of English accept (ii).

(ii) ✔ this author and that one

If some of these speakers allow the of phrase to adjoin into the intransitive elementary tree in addition to substituting
into the transitive one, then they, too, would judge (55b) to be acceptable (at least marginally so).

5. Strictly speaking, this statement is true only of fond in predicative position, not in prenominal position.
 Chapter 6: Extending the X′ schema 237

(i) Predicative: *Their parents are fond.

(ii) Prenominal: ✔their fond parents

6. In traditional grammar, Ps that take clausal complements are classified as subordinating conjunctions (along with
if and that), but as in the case of intransitive Ps, we again reject the traditional approach. First, it is conceptually
uneconomical. Specifically, it expresses the difference between (69a) and (69b) in terms of the syntactic category of
the heads (preposition versus subordinating conjunction), which redundantly encodes the difference in the syntactic
category of the complement (noun phrase versus clause). Second, the items in (69) share roughly the same semantic
content, regardless of the categorial status of their complement. In contrast, if and that are relatively contentless
and give the impression of functioning purely as “grammatical glue”. In the approach that we are advocating, the
distinction between P and C corresponds to the distinction between contentful and contentless subordinating con-
junctions.

7. In (73), some French speakers prefer or require the subjunctive form of the auxiliary (ait) rather than the indicative
form (a). For present purposes, this variation, which is comparable to that found in English between If I was a rich
man and If I were a rich man, is irrelevant.

8. acc = accusative (case of direct object),

gen = genitive (possessive case),
decl = declarative clause,
mod = modifier,
pRs = present tense,
ps = person,
sg = singular,
top = topic of sentence.

9. The data discussed in this section come from Kerr (2024a), with the foundational work on Tunen coming from Dugast
(1971) and Mous (1997, 2003, 2005, 2014). Additional overview discussion of the word order of languages of this region
can be found in Sande, Baier, and Jenks (2019). Glosses have been simplified for expository purposes; see original
sources for more precise glossing. The pattern reported here was first addressed in the generative literature by Hilda
Koopman for Vata and other Kru languages (Koopman 1984).

10. It is not just the expression of agent arguments that is freer in noun phrases than in sentences. As the contrast
between (i) and (ii) shows, the same is true of theme arguments.

(i) a. ✔ The mills employed thousands; their practices damaged the environment.
b. * The mills employed; their practices damaged.
(ii) a. ✔ an employer of thousands; the damage to the environment
b. ✔ an employer; the damage

This has potential consequences for the acquisition of one substitution, as we discuss later on in the chapter.
Chapter 6: Extending the X′ schema 238

Exercises and problems 6.7

Exercise 6.1: Tree-drawing practice: adverb phrases
Draw trees for the adverb phrases below using X′ -syntax, using no triangles. You will need to
decide on a grammatical category for morphemes like very and too.

(1) a. very quietly

b. too loudly
c. much too loudly
d. very much too loudly

Exercise 6.2: Tree-drawing practice: noun phrases (DPs)

Draw trees for the noun phrases (DPs) below using X′ -syntax, using no triangles. Like the pre-
vious exercise, you will need to come up with an analysis for words like very.

(1) a. the fuzzy fleece

b. the old red ugly Christmas sweater
c. this very spicy salsa
d. the frying pan with a loose handle
e. the cookbook with notes in the margins
f. the bottle of hoisin sauce in the back of the fridge.
g. a bright yellow bottle of mustard
h. the very fluffy puppy

Exercise 6.3: Tree-drawing practice: possessive noun phrases (DPs)

Draw trees for the noun phrases below using X′ -syntax, using no triangles.

(1) a. the puppy

b. the puppy’s collar
c. my mother
d. my mother’s puppy’s collar
e. the puppy’s right ear
Chapter 6: Extending the X′ schema 239

Exercise 6.4: Tree-drawing practice with sentences A

The examples here are the same as were given in Chapter 5, Exercise 5.1. Revisit these sentences,
drawing trees using no triangles.
1. The very clever student will study every night in the library.
2. Tired students will always take naps before class.
3. Khydence found a book about Maya Angelou in the park.
4. Babies run rather slowly.
5. Lucca’s incessant talking always annoys Maisha.

Exercise 6.5: Tree-drawing practice with sentences B

The examples here are the same as were given in Chapter 5, Exercise 5.2. Revisit these sentences,
drawing trees using no triangles.
1. Langston wants Maisha to come to school today. (assume to is Infl)
2. Preston said that Maisha will eat a hamburger for dinner.
3. That Maisha worked for the whole night might intimidate Preston.
4. Anabella thinks that Lucca should thoroughly clean the kitchen.
5. Preston suggested that Victor should write a joke on the blackboard.
6. Many culinary students believe that their exams should be eaten.
7. The baker kneaded the dough with impressive force.

Exercise 6.6: Tree-drawing practice with sentences C

The examples here are the same as were given in Chapter 5, Exercise 5.3. Revisit these sentences,
drawing trees using no triangles.
1. The dog jumped over the ditch.
2. An aspiring doctor should study hard every day.
3. That the faucet is dripping might upset your father.
4. It might anger your mother that you turned up the thermostat.
5. The chef carefully stirred the sauce.
6. Every dog knows the location of their treats.
7. Lucca might never play his music in public.
8. The students might play games at recess today.
9. The latest article in the New York Times explains the current international crisis.
Chapter 6: Extending the X′ schema 240

Exercise 6.7: Examining predictions structures make

Formally, the structures in (1) are consistent with X′ theory. Empirically, however, they are
unsatisfactory representations because they are inconsistent with certain linguistic judgments.
What are those judgments?

Take Note

In the evidence that you provide, you should feel free to replace the with other determiners
and plural nouns with singular nouns.

(1) a. DP b. PP

D′ P′

D′ PP P′ PP

D◦ NP P′ P◦ DP P′
the on
N′ P◦ DP D′ P◦ DP
on with
N◦ D′ D◦ NP D′
houses the
D◦ NP N′ D◦ NP
the a
N′ N◦ N′
corner
N◦ N◦
corner sign

Exercise 6.8: Structure of possessive noun phrases

A. Build structures for the (a) examples in (1)–(3). The other examples are there to guide you;
you’re not being asked to build separate structures for them.

(1) a. the monster’s mother’s lair

b. the monster
c. the monster’s mother

(2) a. the hero of the poem’s name

b. the hero
c. the hero of the poem

(3) a. the mother of the monster’s dislike of the poem’s hero

Chapter 6: Extending the X′ schema 241

b. the monster
c. the mother of the monster
d. the poem
e. the poem’s hero

B. Build structures for the noun phrases in (4).

(4) a. yesterday’s lecture

b. this week’s unseasonably high temperatures

C. Build structures for the noun phrases in (5), and indicate the recursive nodes. (Treat my as
I plus ’s.)

(5) a. the neighbor’s doctor’s dog

b. my father’s mother’s watch

Exercise 6.9: Identifying grammatical categories

A. What is the syntactic category of hiring in (1a) and (1b)? Provide evidence for your con-
clusions.

(1) a. We dislike Kim’s impulsive hiring of incompetents.

b. We dislike Kim impulsively hiring incompetents.

B. Build structures for the underlined gerund phrases in (1). Give the full structure for incom-
petents, but feel free to use triangle notation for the proper noun Kim.

Exercise 6.10: Structures for ambiguous noun phrases

A. The noun phrase in (1) has two distinct interpretations, which can be paraphrased as in (2).

(1) the houses on the corner with a sign

(2) a. the houses on the corner that have a sign

b. the houses on the corner that has a sign

Build two structures for (1), clearly indicating which structure goes with which interpreta-
tion in (2).
B. Give paraphrases for (or otherwise distinguish between) the two interpretations available
for (3), and then build the relevant structures, clearly indicating which structure goes with
which interpretation.

(3) I enthusiastically recommend this candidate with no qualifications.

C. Repeat (B) for (4).

(4) the mother of the bride’s father

Chapter 6: Extending the X′ schema 242

Exercise 6.11: Structures for ambiguous sentences A

Thanks to Amy Forsyth for the template for the examples in Exercise 6.11.
A. The sentences in (1) are many-ways ambiguous. Find as many interpretations as you can,
clearly describing the relevant situations you have in mind (see (2) for example descrip-
tions). Build trees for each interpretation that you find, clearly indicating which tree is
associated with which interpretation.
Hint: Work backwards. First construct possible trees, and then figure out the interpretation
from the syntactic structure.

(1) a. The trainer tapped the seal with the ball on its nose.
b. The woman chased the cat with the mouse on the bicycle.

B. Many-ways ambiguous though the sentences in (1) are, they cannot be used to describe the
situations in (2), respectively.

(2) a. There is a seal balancing on its nose, and the trainer uses a ball to tap this seal.
b. There is a cat riding a bicycle, and the woman is using a mouse to chase this cat.

Exercise 6.12: Structures for ambiguous sentences B

This exercise harks back to Exercise 1.8 from Chapter 1. Each of these sentences is ambiguous.
Relying on your now more sophisticated knowledge of phrase structure, build structures for the
possible interpretations of the sentences in (1).

(1) a. Charis will answer the question precisely at noon.

b. Laila will watch the man from across the street.
c. They should decide if they will come tomorrow.
Chapter 6: Extending the X′ schema 243

Exercise 6.13: Structures for complement clauses

Build subtrees for the matrix and the subordinate clauses in (1), and indicate how they fit to-
gether.

(1) a. The students will solve the problem, though it seems difficult.
b. The students will solve the problem, though we acknowledge that it seems difficult.

Exercise 6.14: Tuki phrase structure

The data in this problem set are drawn from Biloa (2013).
Tuki is a Bantu language spoken in Cameroon, distantly related to more familiar languages
like Swahili and Zulu. Given our model to this point, use the data here to develop an initial
analysis of Tuki phrase structure.
▶ Draw a tree for each of the following sentences from the data set:
▷ Example (2a)
▷ Example (4a)
▶ With respect to headedness, is Tuki harmonic, or disharmonic? Explain, referencing
specific examples.

Background Info

Tuki has a noun class system, so all nominals fall into a noun class, and agreement with
nominals is agreement in noun class. Noun class is not glossed in this data set in order
to limit our focus on clause structure, and all agreement in noun class is simply glossed
as agR. Tuki has multiple past tenses and future tenses, which can be assumed to behave
similarly syntactically insofar as we are concerned here. All data here are from Biloa (2013),
with some glosses adjusted for our current purposes.

(1) a. Atangana a-mu-nyá cuya ibísi aye.

Atangana agR-pst1 -eat fish morning this
‘Atangana ate fish this morning.’
b. Atangana a-tó-o-nyá cwí ibísi aye.
Atangana agR-neg-pst1 -eat fish morning this
‘Atangana did not eat fish this morning.’
c. Ngono a-má-súwa tsono ídzo.
Ngono agR-pst2 -wash clothes yesterday
‘Ngono washed clothes yesterday.’
d. Pasa a-nû-námbam Vibúfa anénga aye.
Pasa agR-fut1 -cook Vegetables evening this
‘Pasa will cook vegetables this evening.’
Chapter 6: Extending the X′ schema 244

(2) a. Iyere a-mú-éná vâdzú.

teacher agR-pst1 -see children
‘(The) teacher saw the children’.’
b. Vâdzú vá-mú-eńá iyere.
Children agR-pst1 -see teacher
‘(The) children saw a/ the teacher.’

(3) a. ì sutú n-aámε

agR belly agR-my
‘my belly’
b. ì-ngùrú aádzíí
agR-feet those
‘those feet’
c. vì-kúndá iívì
agR-beds these
‘these beds.’

(4) a. Mbárá a-mu-údzá éé Putá a-nu-nambám cwí.

Mbara agR-pst1 -say that Puta agR-fut1 -cook fish
‘Mbara said that Puta would cook fish’
b. íyére a-dingám éé vǎdzú va súkúrú váá va-yére.
teacher agR-loves that children of school his agR-teach
‘The teacher wants his students to study.’

Exercise 6.15: Attachment of embedded clauses

This exercise assumes that you are familiar with the terms “relative clause” and “noun comple-
ment clause”. If not, see the end of the exercise for a tutorial.
A. Provide evidence whether relative clauses, illustrated in (1), are arguments or adjuncts of
the noun they modify.

(1) Relative clauses

a. The idea that Columbus was working with was incorrect.
b. The fact that they have discovered is important.

B. Subordinate clauses of the type illustrated in (2) are traditionally called noun complement
clauses.

(2) Noun complement clauses

a. The idea that Columbus was the first European to discover America is incorrect.
b. The fact that they are wrong is lost on them.

Provide evidence whether noun complement clauses are syntactic arguments of the noun or ad-
juncts. In other words, given the way that the term “complement” is used in X′ theory, is the
term “noun complement clause” for these clauses a misnomer?
Chapter 6: Extending the X′ schema 245

Background Info

If you are not familiar with the distinction between noun complement clauses and that
relative clauses, here are two simple diagnostics for distinguishing between them. Our
baseline examples of noun complement clauses and relative clauses are listed here:
(i) Relative clauses

(3) The idea that Columbus was working with was incorrect.
(4) The fact that they have discovered is important.
(ii) Noun complement clauses

(5) The idea that Columbus was the first European to discover America is in-
correct.
(6) The fact that they are wrong is lost on them.
▶ First, stripping away the complementizer that leaves a complete sentence in the case
of a noun complement clause, but something incomplete in the case of a relative
clause (it feels like there is a gap, as indicated by the underlining).
(iii) a. ✔ Columbus was the first European to discover America.
b. ✔ They are wrong.
(iv) a. * Columbus was working with .
b. * They have discovered .
▶ Second, the complementizer that can generally be replaced by a wh-word in a relative
clause, but never in a noun complement clause.
(v) a. * The idea which Columbus was the first European to discover America is
incorrect.
b. * The fact which they are wrong is lost on them.
(vi) a. ✔ The idea which Columbus was working with was incorrect.
b. ✔ The fact which they have discovered is important.

Problem 6.1: English prenominal dependents

Noun phrases like those in (1) and (2) show an ambiguity, reported in these examples.

(1) a Russian teacher

ambiguous: either someone who teaches Russian, or who is a teacher (of anything) who
is of Russian origin/nationality

(2) a Spanish teacher

ambiguous: either someone who teaches Spanish, or who is a teacher (of anything) who
is of Spanish origin/nationality
Chapter 6: Extending the X′ schema 246

That ambiguity disappears in more complex noun phrases like those in (3) and (4).

(3) a Russian Spanish teacher

someone who teaches the Spanish language, who is of Russian origin/nationality

(4) a Spanish Russian teacher

someone who teaches the Russian language, who is of Spanish origin/nationality

Instructions:
1. Why are the noun phrases in (1) and (2) ambiguous, and why are the noun phrases in (3)
and (4) not ambiguous?
2. Draw a tree for the noun phrase in (4).

Problem 6.2: Ambiguity and structure

If a given string is structurally ambiguous (that is, it has more than possible structural represen-
tation), is it necessarily associated with more than one meaning? Explain, giving examples.
Hint: Exercise 6.10, B.

Problem 6.3: DP structure

The structures in (1) are intended to represent the second conjunct in (2). def in (1c) stands for
“definite”.

(1) a. DP b. DP

D′ D′

D′ PP D′ NP

D◦ on the shelf D◦ N′
that that
N′ PP

N◦ on the shelf
∅one
Chapter 6: Extending the X′ schema 247

c. DP

D′

D′ NP

D◦ N′
[def]
N′ PP

N◦ on the shelf
that

(2) the book on the table, and that on the shelf

Discuss the relative merits of the three structures in (1). In other words, what considerations
(whether empirical or conceptual) make each of the structures attractive or unattractive?

Problem 6.4: DPs or NPs

In (62) of Chapter 1, we mentioned an alternative approach to noun phrase structure different
from the one presented in this chapter. According to the alternative approach (updated to be in
accordance with the X′ schema), all determiners are intransitive, and all nouns have substitution
nodes in the specifier position for (possibly silent) determiners, as shown in (1).

(1) a. DP b. NP c. NP

D′ »DP« N′ »DP« N′

D◦ N◦ N◦ »XP«

Discuss the relative merits of this approach compared to the one presented in the text. In
other words, what considerations (whether empirical or conceptual) would lead you to adopt or
reject this alternative approach to noun phrase structure?

Problem 6.5: Determiner phrases

Wouldn’t it be simpler to say that determiners (and possessive pronouns) are modifiers, just
like adjectives? Then we could continue say that noun phrases are the maximal projections of
nouns, just like in the olden days in Chapters 3 and 5. What are the costs and benefits of this
approach?
Chapter 6: Extending the X′ schema 248

Problem 6.6: Malagasy word order (Austronesian, Madagascar)

Data set provided by Matt Pearson.
Evaluate the evidence below and describe what parameters must exist within our current model
in order to accommodate the word orders illustrated here.
▶ Include a list of precisely-stated parameters that you deem necessary for X′ -syntax in order
to account for the data set. Parameters can simply be stated in prose (e.g. complements either
precede or follow heads).
▶ For each parameter, state what specification the language has (e.g. In English, complements
follow heads).
▶ Your response should point out any data that your parameters fail to cover.
▷ The idea is that between your list of parameters and your list of patterns/data that your
parameters you don’t cover, all the data patterns from the data set are addressed.
▷ Ideally, your parameters explain everything, but our analyses don’t always accomplish
that.
▷ But you need to be specific in how it falls short.
▶ Draw a tree for each of the following sentences from the data set:
▷ Example (4)
▷ Example (8)
▶ Abbreviations: 1s = first person singular, 2s = second person singular, 3 = third person (sin-
gular or plural), 1ex = first person plural exclusive, Acc = accusative (i.e. the case form of
objects), Irr = irrealis/future tense/mood, Nom = nominative (i.e. the case form of subjects),
Pfx = prefix used to form verb stems from roots, Pres = present tense, Pst = past tense.
▶ Note: Embedded CPs always appear at the end of the sentence they are embedded in; this
is a common cross-linguistic pattern, and you are not required to explain that. They are
included here to provide you with evidence of the word order of complementizers.

(1) Tonga ilay zazavavy

arrived that girl
‘That girl (has) arrived’
(2) M-a-tory ny mpamboly
Pres-Pfx-sleep the farmer
‘The farmer is sleeping’
(3) N-am-angy ny ankizy ny mpamboly
Pst-Pfx-visit the children the farmer
‘The farmer visited the children’
(4) N-am-angy anay tamin’ ny alakamisy ilay mpamboly
Pst-Pfx-visit us on the Thursday that farmer
‘That farmer visited us on Thursday’
Chapter 6: Extending the X′ schema 249

(5) M-i-hinana ahitra ny omby

Pres-Pfx-eat grass the cow
‘Cows eat grass’
(6) N-an-droso ny sakafo ny vahiny izahay
Pst-Pfx-serve the meal the guest we
‘We served the guests the meal’
(7) N-an-droso sakafo ny vahiny t-amin’ ny lovia vaovao izahay
Pst-Pfx-serve meal the guest Pst-on the plate new we
‘We served the guests a meal on the new plates’
(8) Tonga taorian’ ny mpamboly ny mpampianatra antitra
arrived after the farmer the teacher old
‘The old teacher arrived after the farmer’
(9) N-am-ono ny akoho ny vehivavy
Pst-Pfx-kill the chicken the woman
‘The woman killed the chicken’
(10) N-am-ono ny akoho tamin’ ny antsy lehibe ny vehivavy
Pst-Pfx-kill the chicken with the knife big the woman
‘The woman killed the chicken with the big knife’
(11) M-a-tahotra bibilava ilay lehilahy
Pres-Pfx-fear snake that man
‘That man is afraid of snakes’
(12) M-a-tahotra anay ilay lehilahy
Pres-Pfx-fear us that man
‘That man is afraid of us’

Problem 6.7: Word order in Japanese (Japonic, Japan)

Data set provided by Xiaoxing Yu
▶ Instructions:
1. Describe the linear ordering of the following, specifying whether they precede or fol-
low their siblings:
▷ complements
▷ adjuncts
▷ specifiers
2. Draw trees for the following sentences:
▷ Example (2)
▷ Example (9)
▷ Example (4)
3. Are there any data that don’t readily fit the overall patterns? If so, specify them here.
Chapter 6: Extending the X′ schema 250

▶ Some background:
▷ You can generally assume that the lexical category of a Japanese word is the same as
its English equivalent. For instance, Shiori-ga ‘Shiori-nom’ is a noun. If you want to
propose a specific difference, that’s fine, just be specific.
▷ The suffixes -ga, -o, and -no are case-markers, morphemes that correlate to the gram-
matical function/role of a noun phrase. You may ignore these nominal affixes for
this problem set. For example, treat Shiori-ga as a noun (N).
▼ For reference: the affix -ga marks a noun as nominative, which is the form of
subjects (nom); -o marks a noun as accusative, which is the form of objects (acc);
-wa marks a noun as the topic of the sentence; -no marks a noun as genitive (gen,
possessor, like English -s or of ); -ni marks a phrase as dative (dat, indirect objects
and other goals).
▷ The suffix -mai is a classifier (clf), which is usually obligatory after numbers in
Japanese. You may ignore it for this problem set. That is, treat nana-mai as just
the number “seven”.

(1) Shiori-wa warat-ta.

Shiori-top laugh-pst
‘Shiori laughed.’
(2) Masaki-wa Shiori-o mi-ta.
Masaki-top Shiori-acc see-pst
‘Masaki saw Shiori.’
(3) Shiori-wa dorayaki-o tabe-ta.
Shiori-top dorayaki-acc eat-pst
‘Shiori ate dorayaki.’
(4) Shiori-wa Yuuto-ga dorayaki-o tabe-ta to omotte-i-ru
Shiori-top Yuuto-nom dorayaki-acc eat-pst that think-pRog-pRs
‘Shiori thinks that Yuuto ate dorayaki.’
(5) Tohru-ga sono aoi ie-o mi-ta
Tohru-nom that blue house-acc see-pst
‘Tohru saw that blue house.’
(6) Kazumi-wa hayaku tabe-ta.
Kazumi-top quickly eat-pst
‘Kazumi ate quickly.’
(7) Kazumi-wa basutei ni aruk-u.
Kazumi-top bus.stop to walk-pRs
‘Kazumi walks to the bus stop.’
(8) Kazumi-wa kinou odot-ta.
Kazumi-top yesterday dance-pst
‘Kazumi danced yesterday.’
Chapter 6: Extending the X′ schema 251

(9) Kazumi-wa gakkou de juusu-o nom-u.

Kazumi-top school at juice-acc drink-pRs
‘Kazumi drinks juice at school.’
(10) Kazumi-wa Ryōsuke-ga Isao-to kissu shita ato kare-o shikat-ta.
Kazumi-top Ryōsuke-nom Isao-acc kiss do-pst after him-acc scold-pst
‘Kazumi told off Ryōsuke after he kissed Isao.’
(11) Ano hito-wa Kazumi-ni raburetaa-o nana-mai okut-ta.
That person-top Kazumi-dat love.letter-acc seven-clf send-pst
‘That person sent Kazumi seven love letters.’
(12) kono osharena wanpiisu
this fashionable dress
‘this fashionable dress’
(13) Kazumi-wa zakuro-ga daisuki.
Kazumi-top pomegranate-nom loves
‘Kazumi loves pomegranates.’

Problem 6.8: Uyghur word order

Uyghur is a Southeastern Turkic language spoken by about 10 million native speakers in north-
western China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan, among other places (Yakup 2022).
Examine the Uyghur sentences from Major, Mayer, and Eziz (2023) below, and draw trees
for (1), (4), (6), (7), (10), and (16). You may assume the case ending -ni/acc is part of the DP it
attaches to and abbreviate all DPs with triangles. You can also assume that tense and agreement
arise on the same syntactic head.

Background Info

In what follows, ptcp indicates a participle (a kind of verbal form analogous to ‘breaking’
in ‘The vase is breaking’ or ‘broken’ in ‘The vase was broken’ in English). fml stands for
‘formal’.

(1) Men oqu-d-um.

1sg read-pst-1sg
‘I read.’
(2) Men Tursun-ni kör-d-üm.
1sg Tursun-acc see-pst-1sg
‘I saw Tursun.’
(3) Men Tursun-ni ut-t-um.
1sg Tursun-acc win-pst -1sg
‘I beat Tursun.’
(4) Men Tursun-ni kes-t-im.
1sg Tursun-acc cut-pst-1sg
‘I cut Tursun.’
Chapter 6: Extending the X′ schema 252

(5) Men Tursun-ni al-d-im.

1sg Tursun-acc take-pst-1sg
‘I took Tursun.’
(6) Tursun bar-i-du.
Tursun go-npst-3
‘Tursun will go.’
(7) Men oqu-ghan i-d-im.
1sg read-ptcp.pst aux-pst-1sg
‘I had read.’
(8) Men ut-qan i-d-im.
1sg win-ptcp.pst aux-pst-1sg
‘I had won.’
(9) Mahinur bar-ghan i-d-i.
Mahinur read-ptcp.pst aux-pst-3
‘Mahinur had gone.’
(10) Men bar-ghan e-mes i-d-im.
1sg read-ptcp.pst aux-neg aux-pst-1sg
‘I had not gone.’
(11) Men kél-er i-d-im.
1sg come-ptcp.fut aux-pst-1sg
‘I would come.’
(12) Men oqughuchi.
1sg student
‘I am a student.’
(13) Men oqughuchi e-mes.
1sg student aux-neg
‘I am not a student.’
(14) Men oqughuchi i-d-im.
1sg student aux-pst-1sg
‘I was a student.’
(15) Mahinur oqughuchi i-d-i.
1sg student aux-pst-3
‘I was a student.’
(16) Men oqughuchi e-mes i-d-im.
1sg student aux-neg aux-pst-1sg
‘I was not a student.’
Chapter 6: Extending the X′ schema 253

Identifying Puzzles 6.1: Scottish Gaelic word order

Data set provided by Jason Ostrove
Your task is to articulate the puzzle, or the challenge, that is posed to our model thus far by the
data provided here. Explain in prose, using relevant jargon and/or tree structures as is helpful,
why the data from Scottish Gaelic below don’t have an account based on our model thus far.

(1) Phòg Eòghainn Seamus.

kissed Eòghainn Seamus
‘Eòghainn kissed Seamus.’
cannot mean ‘Seamus kissed Eòghainn.’
(2) Phòg Seamus Eòghainn.
kissed Seamus Eòghainn
‘Seamus kissed Eòghainn.’
cannot mean ‘Eòghainn kissed Seamus.’
(3) Phòg am fear a’ mhuc.
kissed the man the pig
‘The man kissed the pig.’

Don’t attempt to give a solution! Just identify what the theoretical challenge is that is posed by
the data. We will get to solutions later in the textbook.

Identifying Puzzles 6.2: English one-replacement

For all speakers of English, the sentence in (1) can have either of the interpretations in (2).

(1) Jane has a big black dog, and Jean has a small one.

(2) a. Jane has a big black dog, and Jean has a small dog.
b. Jane has a big black dog, and Jean has a small black dog.

On the other hand, (3) means only (4a) for most speakers of English. However, some speak-
ers are able to interpret (3) as (4b) (Radford 1988) (such variable judgments among different speak-
ers are conventionally indicated by a percent symbol).

(3) Jane has a big black dog, and Jean has a brown one.

(4) a. Jane has a big black dog, and Jean has a brown dog.
b. % Jane has a big black dog, and Jean has a big brown dog.
A. Which of the interpretations of (1) and (3) is problematic? Explain.
B. Can you think of a way of resolving the problem you laid out in your answer to (A)?
Chapter 6: Extending the X′ schema 254

Identifying Puzzles 6.3: Tiriki word order

Your task is to articulate the puzzle, or the challenge, that is posed to our model thus far by the
data provided here. Explain in prose, using relevant jargon and/or tree structures as is helpful,
why the data from Tiriki below don’t have an account based on our model thus far. That is,
explain the puzzle that these data create for our current theory.
Background:
▶ Tiriki is a Bantu language spoken in Western Kenya.
▶ Tiriki’s canonical word order is SVO.
▶ The cardinal numbers in glosses represent noun classes (a form of grammatical gender). They
show you what is agreeing with what, but aside from that you can ignore them.
▶ Canonical word order of Tiriki is SVO.
▶ sm stands for “subject marker” and is the subject agreement form on the verb.
Assumptions: Assume that subject agreement and tense morphemes arise from I◦ .

(1) Tsi-ngómbe tsi-ng’w-ere ma-tsi

10-cows 10sm-drink-pfv 6-water
‘The cows drank water.’

(2) a. Musa a-tuy-i mu-saala khavere

1Musa 1sm-hit-pst 3-tree twice
‘Moses hit the tree twice.’
b. Musa a-tuy-i khavere mu-saala
1Musa 1sm-hit-pst twice 3-tree
‘Moses hit the tree twice.’

(3) a. Amukotso a-tekh-i ma-kanda mwisaangaala

1Amukotso 1sm-cook-pst 6-beans in.happiness
‘Amukotso cooked beans happily.’
b. Amukotso a-tekh-i mwisaangaala ma-kanda
1Amukotso 1sm-cook-pst in.happiness 6-beans
‘Amukotso cooked beans happily.’

Don’t attempt to give a solution! Just identify what the theoretical challenge is that is posed by
the data. We will get to solutions later in the textbook.
 7
Locality of selection

Chapter outline
7.1 What is selection? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 256
7.2 VP-Internal Subject Hypothesis (VPISH) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 259
7.2.1 Verbs place selectional restrictions on subjects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 260
7.2.2 Subjects inside of small clauses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261
7.2.3 Floating quantifiers show a low position for subjects . . . . . . . . . . . . 262
7.2.4 Low subjects in progressive presentational constructions . . . . . . . . . . 263
7.2.5 A summary of VPISH . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 264
7.3 Selection is a lexical property . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 264
7.3.1 What makes up lexical knowledge? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 264
7.3.2 Syntactic heads make up lexical knowledge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265
7.3.3 Elementary trees as a tool to represent lexical knowledge . . . . . . . . . 267
7.4 Selection is local . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 268
7.4.1 Conceptual rationale for locality of selection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 268
7.4.2 Empirical motivations for locality of selection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 268
7.4.3 Lessons about selection from idioms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 269
7.5 Resolving apparent non-locality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273
7.5.1 Wh-movement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 274
7.5.2 The positions of subjects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 274
7.5.3 Passive sentences involve movement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275
7.6 VSO: An additional argument for VPISH (and UTAH) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 278
7.6.1 Deriving VSO word order . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 279
7.6.2 Theta roles have consistent positions in VP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 280
7.7 Conclusion: Selection is local . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 281
7.8 Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283
7.9 Exercises and problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283

In this chapter we explore some additional foundational assumptions, taking a break from
expanding our conclusions about X′ -syntax to explore how selection works in human syntax.
After an initial discussion of c-selection and s-selection, we discuss the VP-Internal-Subject-
Chapter 7: Locality of selection 256

Hypothesis (VPISH), which is a significant instance of selectional properties in syntax leading to

conclusions that are not always surface evident. The notion of syntactic movement is introduced
to explain why this structure of the verb phrase is not always surface-evident. After discussing
VPISH we establish some foundational assumptions about selection: it is lexical, and it is local.
We then discuss how movement operations can be used to resolve many different kinds of ap-
parently non-local selectional relationships. Both VPISH and movement will be foundational in
the chapters to come.

What is selection? 7.1

A central component of syntactic theory is that some elements in syntax are choosy about what
they co-occur with. Linguists talk about this in terms of “selection”: lexical elements can select
for the kinds of linguistic elements they co-occur with (in various ways). We have already been
discussing different kinds of selection in the preceding chapters, and in this section we clarify
and expand on these notions a bit.
Some examples of selectional restrictions appear to be driven by syntactic considerations,
rather than semantic considerations. We will refer to these as instance of category selection, also
known as c-selection.
(1) a. The children will eat [NP breakfast ] tomorrow morning.
b. The children will eat [NP three bananas ] this morning.
c. * The children will eat [CP that the oatmeal is ready. ]
Examples like (1c) are clearly ungrammatical: the verb eat in English selects for noun
phrases and not for whole clauses. But in an example like (1c) it’s not straightforward that the
problem is a syntactic one, as opposed to a semantic one (perhaps a meaning simply cannot be
constructed for the sentence). Examples like (2) help us to address this.
(2) a. I saw happiness everywhere.
b. * I saw happy everywhere.
In (2) the ungrammatical example is much more semantically plausible, but it is still clearly un-
grammatical. Why? The verb see in English selects for noun phrases (among other things), but
it does not select for adjectives. So even though a listener might well be able to discern what is
meant by a sentence like (2b), it is nonetheless ungrammatical in English.
There are also selectional restrictions that are semantic in nature, which we refer to as se-
mantic selection, or s-selection. Predicates (specifically Fregean predicates) often impose selec-
tional restrictions on one or more of their arguments, depending on the meaning of the predicate.
For instance, drink imposes a selectional restriction on its theme argument to the effect that the
theme argument must refer to a kind or amount of liquid.
Chapter 7: Locality of selection 257

(3) a. Amy drank the { lemonade, #sandwich }.

b. Lukas drank a whole { quart, #piece }.

The predicate elapse selects a subject that refers to an amount of time.

(4) { Two hours, the remainder of the shift, #two liters, #Preston } elapsed without further
incident.

The felicitous use of the verb murder requires (among other conditions) that both the agent and
the theme arguments refer to humans (and arguably, also other species—see below for related
discussion). By contrast, kill imposes weaker selectional restrictions, requiring only that the
theme argument refer to a living being, and does not require the cause of the death to be an
intentional, volitional agent.

(5) a. The fall from the roof killed the squirrel.

b. # The fall from the roof murdered the squirrel.

(6) The { ✔ paramilitary, #bomb, #avalanche } murdered { ✔their parents, #the olive tree, #their
house }.
(7) The { ✔ paramilitary, ✔bomb, ✔avalanche } killed { ✔their parents, ✔the olive tree, #their
house }.

Similarly, many people have said or heard the equivalent of (8) at some point (perhaps from a
parent, or from a significant other). The predicate hear generally only requires a perceiver as
subject, but doesn’t attribute any active participation/agency. The verb listen, on the other hand,
requires an agentive, participatory perceiver.

(8) You might be hearing me, but you’re not listening to me.

Two points are important to keep in mind concerning selectional restrictions. First, notice
that we are using pound signs, rather than asterisks, in (3)–(7); in other words, we are treating the
ill-formedness of sentences that violate selectional restrictions as semantic/pragmatic deviance,
not as ungrammaticality. This approach is consistent with the fact that selectional restrictions
can be flouted for special effect. For example, the ordinary (literal) meaning of lap up is ‘to
drink, usually eagerly, using the tongue, hence especially of animals’. Based on this meaning, we
would expect lap up to select a nonhuman animate agent and a liquid theme. But although both
restrictions are violated in (9), the sentence does not come across as deviant.

(9) The teachers lapped up their students’ praise.

Rather, the violation of the selectional restrictions signals to the hearer that the sentence is in-
tended to be taken not literally, but figuratively—as an instance of metaphor. (10) summarizes the
kind of reasoning that a hearer of (9) would go through; the reasoning process itself is ordinarily
not explicit, but subconscious and lightning-quick.

(10) The teachers lapped up their students’ praise⁇ Whoa there, that’s complete nonsense!
Chapter 7: Locality of selection 258

It’s only nonhuman animals that lap up things. And even then, whatever they’re lapping
up has to be liquid, not something abstract like praise.
But the speaker seems to know English and be compos mentis, so what could they have
possibly meant by what they said?
Oh, maybe what they mean is that the attitude of the teachers towards their students’
praise resembles the eagerness with which a thirsty animal laps up some welcome liquid.

Word of Caution
In distinguishing figurative from literal uses of language, don’t let yourself be confused by
the fact that in the vernacular, the adverb literally is routinely used to draw attention to
a statement’s figurative character, as when people say things like My boss literally hit the
roof. In other words, literally has come to include the meaning of figuratively!

Don’t, by the way, conclude from examples like (9) that selectional restrictions are in force
only intermittently (in force when language is used literally, but not in force when language is
used figuratively). Rather, it is precisely the fact that selectional restrictions are always in force
that prompts a hearer of (9) to go through the reasoning process outlined in (10) and to come
up with an interpretation in which the selectional restrictions are satisfied at the level of the
metaphor.
A second point to keep in mind concerning selectional restrictions is that the criteria for
set membership that the restrictions are based on are not always crystal-clear. In other words,
sets like liquid things, animate beings, murderers, or murder victims, and so on, are somewhat
fuzzy around the edges. Speakers might disagree, for instance, about whether the sentences in
(11) are deviant; the disagreement would concern whether the selectional restrictions on murder
might, on the basis of recent advances in the understanding of animal intelligence, be broadened
to include members of species other than Homo sapiens.

(11) a. The { chimpanzee, dolphin } murdered the explorer.

b. The explorer murdered the { chimpanzee, dolphin }.

Fortunately, for our purposes in this chapter, locating the exact boundary between cases
that meet selectional restrictions and ones that violate them will not be necessary. (And, in fact,
fuzzy boundaries to conceptual categories is a general human phenomenon and is not restricted to
s-selectional properties.) The important thing is that selectional restrictions exist, and that there
are sentences in which they are clearly met and ones in which they are clearly violated.
The discussion above shows that while it’s not always straightforward to identify the source
of marginal judgments, there are ways to sort out what is causing the marginality. One final
diagnostic does not always apply, but where it does, it is useful for making the point clear. We
can call this the cartoon test: the idea is that if a sentence sounds odd but you can imagine it
happening in a cartoon, then the sentence isn’t ungrammatical, but there’s something about the
lexical items being used that is simply incompatible with the actual world. Consider (12), where
(12a) is acceptable, but (12b) is anomalous.

(12) a. The cat jumped on the trampoline.

Chapter 7: Locality of selection 259

b. # The flower jumped on the sound wave.

The source of the anomaly here is about semantic selection: flowers are not the kinds of
things that can jump (which generally must be volitional and animal/animate), and sound waves
are not the kind of things that can be jumped on (we expect a location of some sort based on
the semantics of jump). But these are also facts about the real world: one can easily imagine a
cartoon depicting a scenario like (12b). If a sentence sounds odd in general, but could be a cartoon,
it means the sentence is itself grammatical, but there is a problem with s-selection wherein some
selectional restrictions have not been met. The cartoon test won’t be compatible with all issues
with s-selection, but if it does work (like (12b) does), then this is good evidence that there is an
s-selectional anomaly in the sentence.
To recap: looking at verbs specifically, we can see that they place selectional restrictions
on their arguments. These restrictions can be either syntactic or semantic in nature. C-selection
(category-selection) refers to the ways in which a verb may require only complements of a specific
grammatical category. S-selection (semantic selection) refers to how verbs can require certain
kinds of semantic properties from their arguments. And in fact, s-selection and c-selection are
much broader properties of syntax than just about verbs: any head can place selectional restric-
tions on phrases it selects (that is, any phrase introduced in its complement or its specifier).

VP-Internal Subject Hypothesis (VPISH) 7.2

Up until this point, we have been placing subjects in sentences where we see them overtly in
English: Spec,IP.

(13) a. Lilly will eat his dinner quickly.

b. IP

DP I′

Lilly I◦ VP
will
V′

V′ AdvP

V◦ DP quickly
eat
his dinner

What we will see, however, is that there are good reasons to think that subjects (in English and
Chapter 7: Locality of selection 260

in other languages) don’t originate in Spec,IP, even if they are pronounced in that position. This
will also address what may have been a nagging worry for some students, that being the empty
Spec,VP position in (13b).

7.2.1 Verbs place selectional restrictions on subjects

First, consider the difference between (14a) and (14b):

(14) a. The customers will drink the lemonade.

b. The children will hear the train when it arrives.

The point of the following discussion may seem obvious, but we will build important conclusions
from it. In (14a) the subject is an agent, as the customers are the volitional, intentional drinkers
of the lemonade. The role of the subject in (14b) is different: the children are not an agent, but
instead are the expeRienceR—they may have no choice but to hear the train, and have likely done
nothing to cause the sound it is making, so the subject here does not fit the profile of agent or
cause. This is relatively straightforward because of the verbs in each sentence: drink takes an
agent subject, and hear takes an expeRienceR subject.
What this makes clear, though, is that the thematic role of the subject comes not from I◦ but
from V◦ . This also helps explain the observation that the inflection can change without affecting
the acceptability of the subject:

(15) a. The customers will drink the lemonade.

b. The customers might drink the lemonade.
c. The customers could drink the lemonade.
d. The customers are drinking the lemonade.
e. The customers drank the lemonade.

What’s more, changing what occupies I◦ has no effect on the thematic properties of the
subjects: in each example in (15), the customers remains the agent of the sentence. The takeaway
here is that despite the overt appearance of subjects in English in Spec,IP, they are clearly selected
by verbs. And this matches our intuitions as well: when we think about what in (14a) makes the
subject an agent, we instinctively start discussing the nature of drinking, not the nature of future
tense. So already we see reason to think that there is a closer relationship between subjects and
verbs than between subjects and tense or inflection (in spite of the fact that subjects in these
examples appear adjacent to inflection and not to the verb).
Chapter 7: Locality of selection 261

7.2.2 Subjects inside of small clauses

We can see this close relationship between subjects and verbs from a construction that syntacti-
cians call a “small clause”: an instance of predication without the other components of a typical
clause structure. In English we can see this with the causative-make construction, as in (16):

(16) a. The server made [VP the customers drink the lemonade. ]
b. The parents made [VP the children buckle their seatbelts. ]

The bracketed phrase selected by English causative make is a verb phrase (VP): it contains a
verb and its arguments, but crucially not higher sentential material like inflection. So the comple-
ment of make is ungrammatical if it contains inflection (tense/agreement), as (17) shows.

(17) a. * The server made [IP the customers will drink the lemonade. ]
b. * The parents made [IP the children will buckle their seatbelts. ]

Small clause complements of make show us something crucial about the structure of verb
phrases. English causative-make selects for VPs, but those VPs necessarily include subjects. So
the examples in (16) include the subject inside the VP introduced by make, and attempting to
leave subjects out is unacceptable.

(18) a. * The server made drink the lemonade.

b. * The parents made buckle their seatbelts.

The conclusion, then, is that verb phrases contain subjects. So what do we do about in-
stances where the thematic subject of the verb does not appear overtly inside the verb phrase,
as with all of the verb phrases we used in the preceding chapter? Here we will use the syntactic
concept of movement: we will say that the subject is first positioned inside the verb phrase, and
moves to Spec,IP.

(19) The customers will [VP the customers drink the lemonade. ]

This notion of syntactic movement is highly significant, but at this point very nonspecific
and potentially unconstrained. If elements of a sentence can move from one position to another,
can anything move anywhere? How do we know where anything is located, structurally speak-
ing? These are important questions and we get much more precise about it as the book proceeds.
For now, we will continue to focus our attention on subjects themselves.
The idea that subjects originate inside the verb phrase (even if they move to higher posi-
tions) has become known as the VP-Internal Subject Hypothesis (VPISH).

(20) VP-Internal Subject Hypothesis (VPISH)

Subjects originate inside the verb phrase.

This means that in trees for basic sentences with subjects, those subjects have an original position
inside the verb phrase, moving from Spec,VP to Spec,IP (in English). So our structure for (13)
above will now be as in (21b).
Chapter 7: Locality of selection 262

(21) a. Lilly will eat his dinner quickly.

b. IP

DP I′

Lilly I◦ VP
will
DP V′

Lilly V′ AdvP

V◦ DP quickly
eat
his dinner

As with any new proposal, we want to see converging evidence from different constructions
that this is true. This was already initially suggested by the presence of selectional restrictions
from verbs and the structure of small clauses, but more evidence is desirable for an abstract
proposal like this. We can see this evidence most explicitly in two different constructions in
English: floating quantifiers and low subjects in progressive sentences.

7.2.3 Floating quantifiers show a low position for subjects

Looking at (22) and (23), we can see that the quantifier all that modifies the subject can appear
“floating” away from the subject (a floating quantifier). As a reminder, a quantifier is a grammati-
cal category that modifies a nominal by quantifying over a set (essentially, counting the members
of the set). So all the customers means that out of the relevant set of customers, this sentence refers
to all of them.

(22) a. All the customers will drink the lemonade.

b. The customers will all drink the lemonade.
(23) a. All the children will hear the train.
b. The children will all hear the train.

Even in instances where the quantifier doesn’t appear adjacent to the subject, as in (22b) and
(23b), the quantifier all still modifies the subject (that is, the sentence in (23b) is saying that
all the children will hear the train, not that the children will hear all the trains, or do all the
hearing).
In English, the quantifer all co-occurs with a full DP, so we can say that there is a quantifier
phrase that selects for a DP in these instances.
Chapter 7: Locality of selection 263

(24) QuantP

Quant′

Quant◦ DP
all
the children

So what do we say about a sentence like (23b) where the quantifier and the noun phrase
it modifies are separated? We can say that the DP has moved out of the Quantifier Phrase, with
the result that the quantifier is stranded in its initial position.

(25) a. The children will all hear the train.

b. IP

DPi I′

the children I◦ VP
will
QP V′

all the childreni V◦ DP

hear
the train

This allows us to explain why all modifies the children (they originate as a constituent), and it also
explains why all appears in the particular position that it does: it is precisely in Spec,VP, which
we now take to be the initial position of subjects. Attempting to position the floating quantifier
elsewhere, as in (26), is ungrammatical.

(26) * The children will hear all the train.

7.2.4 Low subjects in progressive presentational constructions

Another English argument in favor of VPISH comes from progressive sentences, which excep-
tionally (for English, at least) allow subjects to stay in a low position in the clause. Presentational
constructions in English use the expletive there as a subject, and the thematic subject can stay
lower in the clause. In progressive (-ing) constructions, this is available more generally than
otherwise is typical for English.

(27) a. the children are eating lunch in the park.

b. [IP There are [VP children eating lunch in the park. ] ]

(28) a. The customers are drinking the lemonade.

b. [IP There are [VP customers drinking the lemonade. ] ]
Chapter 7: Locality of selection 264

Constructions like these might be mysterious if we thought subjects always belonged in Spec,IP.
But if subjects of sentences start inside the VP, it is more straightforward to understand why/how
subjects can occasionally appear structurally lower than Spec,IP. Here, we insert the expletive
there into Spec,IP as part of the presentational construction, leaving the subject in Spec,VP.

7.2.5 A summary of VPISH

What we are left with is a perhaps-unexpected conclusion: subjects, which appear in Spec,IP in
most instances in English, seem to have a grammatical representation inside the VP. And what we
will see in what follows is that this is not a quirk of English: rather, it seems to be a fundamental
feature of all human languages.

(29) IP

I′

I◦ VP

DPi V′

agent V◦ DP

theme

We see, then, that the arguments that a verb selects appear to be represented (at least, initially) in
a close, local relationship to the verb itself. We will see below in § 7.4 that selection is consistently
a local property of syntax.
This raises another point that we will make more clear in what follows below: there are con-
sistent thematic roles assigned to the consistent positions we’re noting inside the VP for subjects
and objects. More on this below in § 7.6. Notably, this consistency is not a quirk about English,
but is a broad crosslinguistic property that has been repeatedly affirmed in a broad range of re-
search, suggesting that VPISH and the structure of thematic roles inside the VP is a significant
lesson to be learned about the nature of Universal Grammar.

Selection is a lexical property 7.3

7.3.1 What makes up lexical knowledge?

At a basic level, language connects some linguistic form (a sequence of sounds or signs) with some
meaning. This is simplest to talk about at the level of lexical morphemes: for example, cat, dog,
Chapter 7: Locality of selection 265

rain, pumpkin pie. Each of these “words” is made up of a sequence of sounds that correlates with
some meaning. So cat is pronounced /kʰæt/ and refers to the set of creatures that share certain
physical, behavioral, and genetic properties (house cats, wild cats, big cats, and so on).
We know that this knowledge, at some level, simply has to be memorized about a language.
We know this because languages can have completely different sequences of sounds or signs to
refer to the same creature.

(30) cat English

gato Spanish
paka Swahili
猫 māo Mandarin Chinese
póéso Cheyenne
猫 neko Japanese
고양이 koyang’i Korean
kucing Malay
िबल्ली billī Hindi
misto̱n Mecayapan/Tatahuicapan Nahuatl

Facts like “how does my language refer to small cranky furry creatures with four legs, a tail,
and knives on their paws” are simply things that a child has to memorize about the language they
are acquiring. So a child learning Swahili will learn that the word for a cat is paka whereas a child
learning Korean will learn that the word for cat is 고양이 koyang’i. These are not complicated
facts, and recognizing them doesn’t require deep insights about human cognition: children will
learn the lexical items that are spoken around them, associating some linguistic form with some
meaning. We refer to memorized knowledge about a language as lexical knowledge, something
which belongs in our mental lexicon.
The mental lexicon is the theoretical construct we use to describe the knowledge that must
simply be memorized by children. So lexical knowledge is something about a word or morpheme
that cannot be explained by a broader pattern of grammar, but is rather something that is learned
about an individual lexical item like ‘cat.’1 The questions about what makes up lexical mean-
ing become much more complicated when talking about grammatical morphemes, grammatical
rules/structures, and other kinds of more complicated lexical structure.

7.3.2 Syntactic heads make up lexical knowledge

In the generative model we are developing, how does lexical (memorized) knowledge compare
to the other properties that make up syntax? The baseline assumption that will work for this
text is to assume that syntactic heads are lexical knowledge, and X′ -syntax and other aspects
of the principles and parameters of syntax are predictable based on the general properties of
syntax, which is to say Universal Grammar. X′ -syntax, by design, predicts what phrase structures
will look like based on the general principles of the X′ schema—all heads project to phrases,
complements are different from adjuncts and specifiers, and so on. The properties of complements
and adjuncts don’t need to be specified for individual verbs, because they are consistent across
languages.
Chapter 7: Locality of selection 266

But what information is stored in a particular head does vary from language to language.
So many languages may have a syntactic head that holds information about tense inflection (we
are using the category Infl, with the head I◦ ). But a given language can show very different kinds
of tense distinctions. For example, English displays two basic non-present tense distinctions (past
vs. future) but ChiBemba in (32) displays eight such distinctions: four past tenses and four future
tenses.2

(31) English tense distinctions

a. Past: They worked
b. Future: They will work

(32) ChiBemba tense distinctions (Bantu) (Givón 1972)

a. Remote past e. Immediate future

ba-àlí-bomb-ele ba-áláá-bomba
‘they worked (before yesterday)’ ‘they’ll work (within the next 3 hours)’
b. Removed past f. Near future
ba-àlíí-bomba ba-léé-bomba
‘they worked (yesterday)’ ‘they’ll work (later today)’
c. Near past g. Removed future
ba-àcí-bomba ba-kà-bomba
‘they worked (today)’ ‘they’ll work (tomorrow)’
d. Immediate past h. Remote future
ba-á-bomba ba-ká-bomba
‘they worked (within the last 3 hours)’ ‘they’ll work (after tomorrow)’

There is robust variation across languages in the particular time distinctions that tense-
marking picks out—so nothing about general principles of grammar explain that. Instead, a child
learning a language will learn to associate a specific morpheme with a specific timeline of a
particular event: a piece of lexical knowledge. Here, therefore, we expect that the content of I◦
heads is lexical knowledge, varying by language.
This conclusion generalizes. So not only is the content of N◦ s and V◦ s lexical knowledge,
but the content of functional projections like I◦ and C◦ are likewise lexical knowledge, because
these are the parts of syntax that are not predictable. This contrasts with the structures generated
by the X′ schema and the operations (like movement) that enter into our model of syntax, which
behave consistently and predictably. So syntactic heads are necessarily components of our mental
lexicon, but the various structures that are created by them are products of syntax.
This division of labor among parts of our theory is often referred to as the T-model (or
Y-model) of syntax. We can illustrate these observations as in (33).
Chapter 7: Locality of selection 267

(33) T-model of syntax (to be revised)

lexicon X′ schema

syntactic structures

This is essentially a conceptual map, similar to a flow chart or an organizational chart of a corpo-
ration/institution. Here we are saying that lexical knowledge and our toolkit for building phrase
structure (the X′ schema) combine to produce syntactic structures.
Notably, this is a model of competence, not of performance. So when we say that one
thing occurs “before” another, we are not describing the sequence of mental operations needed
to say or perceive a sentence. Rather, we are describing the logical structure of a conceptual
architecture. That is to say, the model given above describes how different aspects of human
language relevant to syntax (core phrase structure rules, lexical knowledge, pronunciation of
sentences, interpretation of sentences) must fit together, and what the logical dependencies are
between parts of the system. So the lexicon “precedes” syntactic structures because the existence
of syntactic structures presupposes the existence of lexical items: you need lexical items to build
the syntactic structures. So while we often talk about the “timing” of elements in syntax, within
the model this largely correlates to logical dependencies: what elements logically depend on other
elements for their existence.

7.3.3 Elementary trees as a tool to represent lexical knowledge

In this textbook we have represented lexical knowledge via elementary trees: the predicted struc-
tures based on the particular lexical items under consideration. But crucially, in each case, it is
the syntactic head that carries the relevant information: the rest of the structure is predictable
based on the properties of X′ -syntax. As we’ve been using them so far, they are displaying c-
selectional properties of heads. So our partial elementary tree of I◦ in English given in (34) shows
that I◦ expects VP to be its complement.

(34) I′

I◦ »VP«

Elementary trees are not a part of generative syntax theory per se: they are a pedagogically
useful way of presenting the c-selectional properties of heads (how those heads will combine with
other elements in the syntax). We will continue to use them as they are useful for presenting
selectional properties of heads!
Chapter 7: Locality of selection 268

Selection is local 7.4

The conclusions we arrived at above (language shows properties of selection, and selection is
lexical) lead to another important conclusion: selection is a local property. Here we discuss the
conceptual and empirical reasons to think this is true.

7.4.1 Conceptual rationale for locality of selection

First is the main conceptual reasons for thinking that selection is local. By conceptual reason, we
mean to say that, within the model of syntax we are building, locality of selection is internally
consistent with the rest of the conclusions that we have been reaching. If heads are the only
“substantial” part of grammar that can be memorized as part of speaker’s mental lexicons, then
they are the only piece of phrase structure in which we can encode selectional restrictions. All
other syntactic structures are generated either by core principles of syntax (ex., the X′ -schema)
or by operations like movement that affect the foundational structures.
Our model of syntax holds that phrase structures are endocentric, meaning that the prop-
erties of phrases are determined from within the phrase itself, and in more precise terms, they
are determined by the properties of the head. So, the properties of a VP are defined by V◦ , the
properties of IP are determined by I◦ , and so on. But correlating with this is the idea that the
properties of a given phrase are not defined by some other head.3 So we don’t expect the proper-
ties of the object of a verb to be determined by I◦ or C◦ , for example. The model has no natural
way of accommodating that.
So: most consistent with our model as constructed thus far is the assumption that the
properties of selection are determined by heads, and therefore expected to be effective locally,
inside the projections of that head. Specifically, we expect heads to assert selectional restric-
tions over complements and specifiers (with adjuncts by definition being optional, unselected
elements).

7.4.2 Empirical motivations for locality of selection

And as we would expect if our model is on the right track, the approach to selection that is
consistent with our model does match the empirical facts. That is to say, empirically, it just flat-
out looks like selection is local. So, for example, it’s very common for verbs to place selectional
restrictions on their objects, as illustrated above. What we don’t see, though, is a pattern like (35)
where a verb in present tense can take either a liquid or a solid object, but a verb in future tense
can only take a liquid object and not a solid object. In contrast, the selectional properties of verbs
often determine the semantic properties of their objects, as (36) illustrates.

(35) Hypothetical (unattested) selection of objects by I◦ :

a. I always consume sweet tea at picnics.
b. I always consume chicken at picnics.
Chapter 7: Locality of selection 269

c. I will always consume sweet tea at picnics.

d. * I will consume chicken at picnics.
(36) Attested selection of objects by V◦ :
a. I always drink sweet tea at picnics.
b. ⁇ I always drink chicken at picnics.
c. I will always drink sweet tea at picnics.
d. ⁇ I will always drink chicken at picnics.

The point being: verbs are choosy about the properties of their objects, as illustrated in (36), and
this selection is not affected by changing the tense. But inflection (I◦ ) cannot and does not place
selectional restrictions on objects, so patterns like (35) are unattested in English (or elsewhere).
We can describe our conclusion as in (37):

(37) Principle of Local Selection

Syntactic heads (may) place selectional restrictions on their complements and on their
specifiers.

We see this principle playing out in many ways in different places, everything from the
existence of VPISH to the empirical patterns where complements (selected) are adjacent to heads
but adjuncts (unselected) are outside of complements. And we will see in what follows that these
conclusions end up being helpful for us diagnostically as well.

7.4.3 Lessons about selection from idioms

Idiom chunks
Notably, it is not only simple morphemes that can be lexical items. More complex chunks of
language can also be memorized lexically, and this is transparently evident in the widespread
availability of idioms in natural language: sequences of lexical items that take on a specific,
predictable, non-literal meaning. So kick the bucket in (38) can literally mean to use your feet
to knock over a pail, but in Mainstream American English it can also be a crass way to refer to
someone dying.

(38) Grandpa kicked the bucket.

All languages have idioms, which carry a figurative meaning (like ‘die’) along with their literal
meaning (‘kick an actual bucket’). Notably, phrasal idioms are memorized in just the same way
that individual morphemes and words are memorized, requiring the exact phrasing for the id-
iomatic interpretation to be present. So (39) can only mean the literal event of someone kicking
an actual physical bucket.

(39) Grandpa kicked the pail.

Idioms are necessarily lexical knowledge—they have to simply be memorized about a spe-
cific language. Something that is an idiom in one language is no more or less likely to be an
Chapter 7: Locality of selection 270

idiom in another. So ‘kick the bucket’ means something about dying in English, but in Mandarin
Chinese it has no such figurative meaning, it just means to kick an actual bucket.

(40) 老张 踹 桶子 了。
lǎo-zhāng chuài tǒngzi le.
old-Zhang kick.with.sole bucket le
‘Old Zhang kicked the bucket’. (He has physically laid his foot on that bucket.)

All languages do have idioms, of course; this is illustrated here for Mandarin Chinese:

(41) a. 我家 老爸， 一点儿 都 不 靠谱。

wǒ-jiā lǎo-bà, yìdiǎnr dōu bǔ kào-pǔ.
my-family old-dad, a.little even neg lean.on-musical.score
‘My dad isn’t the least bit reliable.’ (lit. ‘My dad doesn’t lean on the score at all.’)
b. 你 吃了 熊心豹子胆 啊？
nǐ chī-le xiǒng-xīn-bàozi-dǎn a?
you eat-pfv bear-heart-leopard-gallbladder a
‘How could you be so recklessly fearless?’ (lit. ‘Have you eaten a bear’s heart or a
leopard’s gallbladder?’)
c. 兰姐 她 是 唯 恐 天下 不 乱。
Lán-jiě tā shì wéi kǒng tiānxià bù luàn.
Lan-elder.sister she be only fear all.under.heaven neg be.in.disorder
‘Lan just wants to watch the world burn.’ (lit. ‘As for Lan, she fears only that all under
heaven is not in chaos.’)

Notably, none of the literal translations in (41) have idiomatic interpretations in English. Fig-
urative meanings are lexical (memorized) meanings associated with phrases, and are therefore
language-specific.
Even though idioms are language-specific, lexical (memorized) properties of language, they
can in fact teach us a fair bit about general properties of phrase structure. If an idiom is a memo-
rized chunk that is phrasal in nature, we still expect it to be a “chunk”—or in more precise terms, a
constituent. So a broad pattern across languages is that we see plenty of idioms that are composed
of a verb and an object, to the exclusion of the subject.

(42) a. kick the bucket (die)

b. spill the beans (reveal a secret)
c. screw the pooch (make a bad mistake)
d. bite the bullet (do something hard/challenging)
e. break the ice (initiate something)
f. beat around the bush (avoid addressing the actual main issue)

(43) Mandarin Chinese idiomsː

a. 靠谱 kàopǔ
lean on the musical score (be reliable)
Chapter 7: Locality of selection 271

b. 摸鱼 mōyú
stroke fish (be deliberately unproductive at work or school)
c. 出轨 chū guǐ
leave the rails (be unfaithful to a romantic partner)
d. 大出血 dà chū xiě
profusely bleed out (spend a lot of money at once)
e. 吃熊心豹子胆 chī xiǒngxīn-bàozidǎn
eat a bear’s heart or a leopard’s gallbladder (be recklessly fearless)
f. 唯恐天下不乱 wéi kǒng tiānxià bù luàn
fear only that all under heaven is not in chaos (desire to see drama)

All of these idioms are composed of verb phrase material without reference to subjects—
the subject of the idiom can change readily without affecting the idiomatic interpretation (Mike
spilled the beans, Maisha spilled the beans, Lilly spilled the beans, etc). So on our model thus far,
these would be V′ constituents.
Notably, idioms of this sort do not exist where the subject and the verb are the idiom, and
the theme object varies. So something like (44) is unattested cross-linguistically as an idiom.

(44) Imaginary English idiom that doesn’t exist:

the dog bit X (to mean X got tired)

It is possible for subjects to be included in idioms (as we will see in § 7.5.2), but not in a transitive
verb where the object varies.
This pattern of idioms where there are XVO idioms but not SVX idioms is predicted on the
model we have been building, where objects and verbs are more closely related to each other than
they are to subjects.

(45) VP

DPi V′

subject V◦ DP

object

So because there is a verb-object consituent that excludes the subject in our model, it is possible
for verbs and objects (and possible adjuncts and other VP-internal material) to be memorized
constituents with arbitrary meanings. But with this model there is no subject-verb constituent
that doesn’t also include the object, so SVX idioms do not occur.
Chapter 7: Locality of selection 272

Similar lessons from lexical idiosyncracies

We can draw similar lessons from so-called “”ight verb” constructions—these are constructions
that are semi-idiomatic, where a single verb combines with a variety of different kinds of objects
to produce many different kinds of meanings. The verb in these instances doesn’t add much to
the meaning of the sentence, and in fact means quite different things based on the kind of object
it appears with. Examples in English come from verbs like take and throw.4

(46) a. take a bus (= ride a bus)

b. take a nap (= (to) nap)
c. take a pill (= consume medicine)
d. take a chance (= opportunistically attempt something)
e. take a bath (= bathe oneself in a bath)
f. take a shower (= bathe oneself in a shower)
g. take a break (= (to) rest)

(47) a. throw a party (= host a party)

b. throw a punch (= (to) punch)
c. throw a fit (= get very angry, rage about something)
d. throw a tantrum (= immaturely lose control of one’s anger and frustration)
e. throw a match/game (= intentionally lose)
f. throw a switch (= toggle/flip the switch)
g. throw an error/exception (= (of computer code) fail due to an error)
h. throw support (behind someone) (= support someone)

In each instance, the interpretation of the verb phrase is highly dependent on the choice
of the object in a way that is different from non-light-verbs. So a predicate like drink will almost
always describe consumption of a liquid. But it is difficult to describe the meaning of take or
throw in English without reference to the object. Light verb constructions where there are lexical
idiosyncrasies in verb phrase interpretation again suggest a close relationship between verbs and
objects, because at times you don’t even know the interpretation of the verb without knowing
what its object is.
But, notably, there are no light verbs where the meaning of the verb phrase is determined
by the subject and the light verb, with the object varying. (48) imagines an unattested pattern
where get is the light verb that varies in meaning based on the subject.

(48) Imaginary subject-verb light verb (unattested)

a. The elf got X. (to mean X celebrated Christmas)
b. The bunny got X. (to mean X celebrated Easter)
c. The flag got X. (to mean X celebrated Independence Day)
d. The tree got X. (to mean X celebrated Arbor Day)
e. The turkey got X. (to mean X celebrated Thanksgiving)
f. The leprechaun got X. (to mean X celebrated St. Patrick’s Day)
Chapter 7: Locality of selection 273

This of course matches the structure of the verb phrase we’ve been adopting up until this
point. Verbs and objects are more closely related to each other than either of them are related
to subjects. Lexical properties of verbs consistently reflect this pattern (including idiosyncratic
interpretations in light verb constructions, and idiomatic interpreations). If idiosyncratic infor-
mation is memorized as a lexical property of language, it is memorized in chunks, in constituents.
And so we don’t find non-constituent idioms, and the kinds of idioms and lexical idiosyncracy
that we do see matches the properties of syntactic structures more broadly.

Why do we care
It’s easy to lose the plot amidst all these grammatical patterns. What is the lesson to be learned
from these idiosyncratic patterns of light verbs, idioms, and selectional restrictions? There are
two connected conclusions. One is what we just said above: verbs and objects appear to be more
closely related to each other than either are to subjects. But this reflects the larger lesson: selec-
tion, in the sense of lexical heads being choosy about what they combine with, is quite generally
a local phenomenon. Heads are selective about their complements. Heads can also be selective
about their specifiers, but not to the exclusion of their complements: any memorized VP idiom in
the lexicon that includes a specifier necessarily includes a specification for the complement also,
by virtue of how the X′ schema works.

Resolving apparent non-locality 7.5

We’ve already seen examples (and we will see more below) of how two elements of syntax that are
in a selectional relationship can end up not syntactically adjacent. How can we simultaneously
claim that selection is local, but selected elements are not always adjacent? As we noted above, the
answer is movement, that is, the claim that human syntactic knowledge contains representations
of elements in multiple positions. So verbs select subjects and therefore subjects start in VP, but
subjects can move to a structurally higher position, creating apparent non-locality. Notably, this
is not a psycholinguistic or neurolinguistic claim that constituents physically move around in
people’s heads. Rather, what we observe is that a model that has elements of syntax represented
in multiple positions captures the empirical facts well. In this framework, “movement” is what
we call this representation of elements in multiple positions.
Chapter 7: Locality of selection 274

7.5.1 Wh-movement
One kind of movement that we will outline in much detail later on in the book is what commonly
occurs in questions in the world’s languages, which we refer to as “wh-movement” based on the
spelling of question words in English. All speakers of English know that the question word what
in (49) is interpreted as the theme object of the verb devour: the answer to the question will be
whatever the children consumed.

(49) What did the children devour ?

We know that what is selected by devour for various reasons. One, devour requires an object (cf.
*The children devoured.); there is a gap where devour usually takes an object in (49), suggesting that
this is where what originates. Likewise, the answers to the questions are judged on naturalness in
part based on the requirements of devour: if we answered the question in (49) with lunch it would
be unremarkable, but answering chairs would be received with confusion, because humans don’t
devour chairs. The point is that what is interpreted as the object of devour despite not appearing
adjacent to devour. We capture this fact with movement in our model—devour locally selects for
its object (what in this instance) and then what moves to another position in the sentence.

(50) Whatk did the children devour whatk ?

There are various ways that the original position of a moved phrase is annotated. One is
to use strikeout of the moved phrase, as we do in (50). Another common way is to represent the
lower position with a trace of movement, represented with a lowercase italicized t.

(51) Whatk did the children devour t k ?

Both (50) and (51) use a subscripted letter (an index) to show that the trace/base position is the
same phrase that is represented higher: the moved element and its trace are co-indexed (are
assigned the same index).
There are a host of additional questions about movement, such as how it works and how it
is constrained. In earlier theories of generative syntax, for example, the annotation strategies for
movement shown above were linked with very different underlying theories of movement. Traces
and strikeout are now generally used to annotate the same thing—we tend to choose whichever
one best visually illustrates our point in any given discussion. We will engage all of these ques-
tions in later chapters: at present we focus our attention on the question of selection.

7.5.2 The positions of subjects

We saw reasons in § 7.2 above to think English subjects are locally selected by the verb (inside
the VP) despite canonically occurring in Spec,IP in English. Idioms give us yet another reason to
think so. While some idioms (as noted above) are composed of only a verb and an object, some
include a whole transitive VP (subject-V-object).

(52) a. All hell broke loose.

Figurative interpretation: Circumstances all of a sudden become chaotic, noisy, or violent.
Chapter 7: Locality of selection 275

b. The shit hit the fan.

Figurative interpretation: There is suddenly a lot of trouble.

Our assumptions from above tell us that idioms are constituents in our mental lexicons.
Our small clauses from above show us that these are contained in a verb phrase:

(53) a. The Supreme Court decision made [VP all hell break loose in the states. ]
b. The Supreme Court decision made [VP the shit hit the fan in the states. ]

Nonetheless, these idioms can appear in apparently discontinuous contexts, separated by

tense and aspect morphology.

(54) a. All hell might break loose.

b. All hell will break loose.
c. All hell could break loose.
d. All hell broke loose.
e. All hell could have been breaking loose, for all we knew.

(55) a. The shit will hit the fan.

b. The shit might hit the fan.
c. The shit could hit the fan.
d. The shit hit the fan.
e. The shit could have been hitting the fan, for all we knew.

This is of course consistent with our conclusions about VPISH above, which is explained if sub-
jects are first generated inside VP, and then move to a higher position (in English).

(56) a. All hell might [VP all hell break loose. ]

b. The shit will [VP the shit hit the fan. ]

So this is another illustration that apparent non-locality of selection is nonetheless compatible

with locality of selection, if we assume a theory of movement. Idioms must be constituents in
our mental lexicons, and even when they are not surface constituents in a given sentence they
can retain their idiomatic interpretations.

7.5.3 Passive sentences involve movement

As we discussed in Chapter 4, the notion of thematic role is distinct from the notion of gram-
matical function. This is clearly shown by the existence of passive sentences. For instance, in
the active sentence in (57a), it is the agent argument that functions as the subject, whereas in its
passive counterpart in (57b), it is the theme argument (and the by-phrase, a prepositional phrase,
is optionally used to introduce the agent).
Chapter 7: Locality of selection 276

Background Info

In (57), grammatical functions are indicated above the boxed element and thematic roles
are indicated below. The following abbreviations are used:
sbj - subject, obj - object, pp - prepositional phrase, a - agent, thm - theme

sbj obj
(57) a. The committee drafted the letter.
agent thm
sbj pp
b. The letter was drafted (by the committee).
thm agent

Because the theme of the predicate (the element being drafted) is serving the grammati-
cal role of subject, we can analyze the theme object in this instance as moving to subject posi-
tion.

(58) The letter was drafted the letter.

Chapter 10 gets into passives in much more depth. At present, we want to focus on how pas-
sives once again illustrate the same properties of selection that we have been noting in other
constructions as well.

Selectional restrictions in passives

As saw above in (6), subjects or objects can violate a verb’s selectional restrictions. In what
follows, we focus on the objects. For convenience, the relevant facts are repeated in (59).

(59) a. The paramilitary murdered { ✔their parents, #the olive trees, #their houses }.
b. The paramilitary killed { ✔their parents, ✔the olive trees, #their houses }.

Example (60) gives the passive versions of these sentences. As is evident, the acceptability of the
subjects in (60) matches that of the objects in (59).

(60) a. { ✔their parents, #the olive trees, #their houses } were murdered by the paramilitary.
b. { ✔their parents, ✔the olive trees, #their houses } were killed by the paramilitary.

This fact would follow straightforwardly if the theme subject of the passive sentence started out
as the complement of the verb, where it would have to satisfy the verb’s selectional restrictions
in the same way as its counterpart does in the equivalent active sentence. Having been cleared,
so to speak, it could then move to the subject position, where it appears overtly.
Chapter 7: Locality of selection 277

Object idiom chunks in passives

Additional evidence pointing in the same direction comes from so-called object idiom chunks,
which generally appear as the complements of the verbs that license them (the examples in this
section are taken from or modeled on Radford 1988, 422–423). Some examples are given in (61).
The object idiom chunks are underlined, and the licensing verbs are italicized in green.

(61) a. They { gave, paid } hardly any heed to our proposal.

b. The Prime Minister paid due homage to the dead.
c. The government keeps close tabs on their operations.

The restriction of object idiom chunks to the complement position of the licensing verb is
thrown into striking relief by the contrast between nearly synonymous expressions, such as heed
and attention. The variants with the ordinary expressions are grammatical, but those with the
idiom chunks are not, since they are not licensed by the verbs bolded in red.

(62) a. The younger one is always trying to attract my { *heed, ✔attention }.

b. According to the government, the situation requires { *tabs on, ✔monitoring of } the
activists.

Given their licensing requirements, it isn’t surprising that object idiom chunks are gener-
ally ungrammatical in subject position.

(63) a. * More heed to maintenance would result in lower repair bills.

b. * Tabs won’t affect me.

They are, however, able to occur in subject position under one condition—in passive sen-
tences where the passive participle is that of the licensing verb. This is illustrated by the contrast
between (64) and the passive counterparts of (61).

(64) a. ✔ Hardly any heed was { given, paid } to our proposal.

b. ✔ Due homage was paid by the Prime Minister to the dead.
c. ✔ Close tabs were kept on their operations by the government.

These passive examples show that the same interpretive restrictions that typically apply
to objects (whether as part of idioms, or s-selectional restrictions) apply to derived subjects in
passives. These are additional instances of apparent non-locality of selection. The syntactic so-
lution to this apparent non-locality is that there is an underlying locality, but that the relevant
elements have moved to another syntactic position. That is to say, our mental representations of
those sentences include representations of the relevant entity in two separate positions.
As we noted above, we are effectively soft-launching the idea of movement by introducing
some basic contexts relevant to selection where movement offers some clarification. But we still
need a constrained and precise theory of how movement works (and doesn’t work): we will
develop this as the book continues.
Chapter 7: Locality of selection 278

VSO: An additional argument for VPISH (and UTAH) 7.6

An additional argument for VPISH comes from the existence of languages with VSO word order.
The argument here is slightly more complex as it requires a new form of movement not men-
tioned above; all of these movements will be discussed in more depth throughout the rest of this
text.
We saw in Chapter 5 that X′ -syntax naturally accommodates many major word order vari-
ations crosslinguistically. For example, SOV languages like Japanese can be analyzed with a
head-final VP, and VOS languages like Malagasy can be analyzed with a right-facing specifier of
IP.5

(65) パンダは 竹を 食べる。 Japanese

panda-wa take-o tabe-ru.
panda-top bamboo-acc eat-npst
‘Pandas eat bamboo.’
(66) N-am-angy ny ankizy ny mpamboly Malagasy
Pst-Pfx-visit the children the farmer
‘The farmer visited the children’

Many languages around the world have a canonical word order where the first major constituent
in the sentence is the verb, followed by the subject and the object (VSO). VSO is one of the less
common “basic” word orders (compared to SVO or SOV, for example). But it is attested regularly
across a wide variety of unrelated languages, such as Niuean (Austronesian, Niue Island and New
Zealand), Irish (Celtic, Ireland), Turkana (Nilotic, Kenya) , Nandi (Nilotic, Kenya) and the Mayan
languages Q’anjob’al (Guatemala/Mexico) and Ch’ol (Mexico). In the following examples, the
verb is bolded in red, the subject italicized in green, and the object underlined in black.

(67) a. To lagomatai he ekekafo a ia. Niuean

fut help eRg doctor abs him
‘The doctor will help him.’ (Seiter 1980, 29)
b. D’oscail Seán an doras. Irish
open.pst Sean the door
‘Sean opened the door.’ (Guilfoyle 2000, 66)
c. ɛ-mɪn-a ŋesì ŋa-atuk’ Turkana
3-love-a he cows
‘He loves cows.’ (G. Dimmendaal 1983, 62)
d. ki:ri:p lɑ:kwɛ:t ɑrtɛ̂:t Nandi
watched child lamb
‘The child watched the lamb.’ (Creider and Creider 1983, 3)
Chapter 7: Locality of selection 279

e. Max y-il no’ tx’i’ naq Lwin. Q’anjob’al

pfv a3-see clf dog clf Pedro
‘The dog saw Pedro.’
(Baquiax Barreno et al. 2005, 169, via Clemens and Coon 2018, 240)
f. Tyi i-kuch-u aj-Maria jiñi si’. Ch’ol
pfv a3-carry-ss clf-Maria det wood
‘Maria carried the wood.’ (Clemens and Coon 2018, 240)

7.6.1 Deriving VSO word order

In the absence of additional components of a model of syntactic knowledge, VSO word order
would fundamentally pose a challenge to X′ -syntax. If theme objects are complements of verbs
(selected by verbs), within X′ -syntax we expect them to be siblings. But if our structures are
binary-branching, this leaves no position for the subject between the verb and its object.

(68) IP

I′

I◦ VP

V′

V◦ object
subject
⁇?

In the sections that preceded, we introduced the idea above that local selection can some-
times be obscured by movement of an element of syntax to another position, and movement will
again be useful to us here, especially in combination with the conclusion reached about the sub-
jects originate inside the verb phrase (VPISH). If the verb is taken to move to a position higher
than the subject, we can generate VSO word order without abandoning core generalizations about
the structure of VP, or about X′ -syntax more generally. A common analysis of VSO is that verbs
move to I◦ , generating VSO word order.
Chapter 7: Locality of selection 280

(69) Schematic derivation of VSO word order:

IP

I′

I◦ VP

subject V′

V◦ object

Patterns like these VSO word orders were prominent in the field drawing the conclusion
that languages possess VP-internal positions for subjects (VPISH), which has come to be accepted
as a universal property of human language syntax. Some languages (like English) obscure this
low position of subjects by moving subjects to a higher position. But some languages (like Irish,
Turkana, Ch’ol, and others) make it more obvious by generally leaving subjects in this low po-
sition. And as we saw above, even non-VSO like English languages possess constructions (like
small clauses, and others) where subjects may appear inside a VP.
But this movement is another novel one to us at this point—can heads (like a verb) move to
another head position (like I◦ )? This is a kind of movement we will refer to as head movement,
which we will detail in much more depth in what comes, especially in Chapters 8 and 12.

7.6.2 Theta roles have consistent positions in VP

Syntacticians have concluded from patterns like these across a broad range of languages that
VPISH is in fact universal—in all languages, the original position of subjects is inside the verb
phrase. In some languages (like many VSO languages) the subject regularly arises in that position,
whereas in other languages it regularly moves out of that position (such as English). This fits
with our broader conceptual conclusion from this chapter: selection is local, and therefore the
connection of a verb with its subject is encoded syntactically as well, in a structurally low initial
position of the subject (inside the verb phrase).
This conversation also presupposes a point that is worth making explicit: not only do sub-
jects start inside the VP, but thematic roles within the VP continue to appear in syntactic struc-
tures in very predictable ways. That is, in a transitive verb with an agentive subject, the agentive
subject in fact arises from a consistent position inside VP: the specifier of VP (Spec,VP). And
theme objects continue to be introduced as complements of the verb.
Chapter 7: Locality of selection 281

(70) VP

DP V′

agent V◦ DP

theme

This observation has become formalized in a wide variety of work under different names, but the
finding is clear: there are consistent structural positions for specific thematic roles in syntax.6
These specific thematic roles therefore have a grammatical role that is more than simply de-
scriptive of a particular sentence or predicate; instead, they are predictable based on systematic
grammatical structures for different kinds of predicates. These roles have come to be known as
theta roles (𝜃-roles), which are in essence the syntactic realization of these semantic roles.

(71) Theta role (𝜽-role): a thematic role assigned to particular arguments of a predicate

The theory that 𝜃-roles are assigned to particular positions is known as the Universal Alignment
Hypothesis (Perlmutter and Postal 1984) or the Uniform Theta Assignment Hypothesis (Baker
1988).

(72) Uniform Theta Assignment Hypothesis (UTAH):

Universal Grammar specifies that each theta role is assigned to a particular structural
position.

The argument structure of predicates refers to what arguments (possessing what the-
matic roles) are associated with specific predicates. UTAH, as formulated in (70), offers specific
claims about the interface of the semantic properties of argument structure with their syntactic
properties. We already know that (70) is not sufficiently specific as a final theory of UTAH or ar-
gument structure: there are many more thematic roles for predicates than just agent and theme,
and we know that there exist predicates (for instance, ditransitive predicates like give and send)
that take more than one object, which (70) cannot yet explain. So we will need to further develop
our understanding of UTAH as we go, but the present formulation is sufficient for our current
purposes.

Conclusion: Selection is local 7.7

Like Chapter 4, this chapter doesn’t necessary add to the complexity that we draw our trees
with, but instead clarifies and refines a number of concepts and theoretical constructs that will
constrain the model that we are building as we move forward.
Chapter 7: Locality of selection 282

The overall claim of the chapter is that selection is syntactically local: heads place restric-
tions either on their complements or on their specifiers. We saw this play out in a number of
empirical domains: a low position of subjects explaining selectional relationships between verbs
and subjects, but likewise instances (ex., in passives) where objects are moved but nonetheless
show selectional relationships with verbs in their original positions. At the end of this chapter we
introduce the notions of 𝜃-roles and UTAH to allow us to speak with precision about argument
structure of predicates.
For this approach to selection as a local property of syntax to hold up, we need a theory
of movement: elements in syntax can be represented in more than one position, moving from
one position to another. This theory needs refinement as we move along, but part of the core
motivation for movement in syntax has been provided in this chapter.

New Empirical Observations

▶ Heads select for specifical syntactic and semantic properties of their specifiers and
complements.
▶ Selection is local.
▶ Idiom chunks and light verbs only occur in verb-object configurations, never in
subject-verb configurations.
▶ Theta roles appear in consistent positions in VPs

Components of the Theoretical Model

▶ This chapter added a large amount of theoretical constructs:

▷ c-selection
▷ s-selection
▷ locality of selection
▷ Theta Criterion
▷ UTAH
▷ VPISH
▷ existence of movement (we do not yet have a full theory of movement)
▷ T-model (Y-model)
▶ We know that what is built in syntactic structure is dependent on lexical knowledge
and on our core phrase-structure-building capacity.
 Chapter 7: Locality of selection 283

Notes 7.8
1. This description of lexical knowledge can certainly be made more nuanced, as a wealth of work continues to explore
whether or not lexical knowledge has structure (Beavers and Koontz-Garboden 2020). The description of lexical
knowledge here, though, is relatively close to how most syntacticians use the term.

2. The ChiBemba examples come via Kroeger (2022, 416–417), via Chung and Timberlake (1985, 208), from Givón
(1972).

3. There are ways in which this statement oversimplifies, because some operations (movement is one example, but
there are others like Agree) extend over larger stretches of intervening material. But insofar as selection goes, this
statement is sufficient and accurate.

4. These patterns are widely discussed in generative syntax, with the key observations and theoretical consequences
of the patterns typically credited to Marantz (1984) and Kratzer (1994).

5. Japanese data provided by Xiaoxing Yu, Malagasy data provided by Matt Pearson.

6. There is a long history of work on this kind of thematic structure: an entirely non-exhaustive list of relevant refer-
ences includes Perlmutter and Postal (1984), Baker (1988, 1997), and Ramchand (2008, 2018).

Exercises and problems 7.9

Exercise 7.1: Practicing with VPISH
We repeat sentences from exercises in Chapter 5 and 6 here. Draw trees for these sentences that
are consistent with VPISH.
1. The very clever student will study every night in the library.
2. Tired students will always take naps before class.
3. Khydence found a book about Maya Angelou in the park.
4. Babies run rather slowly.
5. Lucca’s incessant talking always annoys Maisha.
6. The dog jumped over the ditch.
7. An aspiring doctor should study hard every day.
8. That the faucet is dripping might upset your father.
9. It might anger your mother that you turned up the thermostat.
Chapter 7: Locality of selection 284

10. The chef carefully stirred the sauce.

11. Every dog knows the location of their treats.
12. Lucca might never play his music in public.
13. The students might play games at recess today.
14. The latest article in the New York Times explains the current international crisis.

Exercise 7.2: C-selection and s-selection

Each of the sentences below are either ungrammatical, anomalous, marginal, or flout selectional
restrictions for dramatic effect. For each, annotate a judgment and explain whether the anoma-
lousness is from a problem with c-selection, a problem with s-selection, or something else.

(1) a. The playground slept all morning.

b. My computer is mad at me.
c. I agree the conditions in the contract.
d. We ate three gallons of milk this week.
e. I want that the children should leave.
f. The children deliberately liked their pizza.
g. The professor persuaded the chairs to be arranged in a circle.
h. I wonder that Jay arrived.
i. The professor gathered in the seminar room.
j. I am angry the outcome.
k. The storm announced its arrival.
l. The weekend announced its arrival.

Exercise 7.3: Kipsigis VSO

Kipsigis is a Kalenjin language belonging to the southern Nilotic languages and is spoken in
Kenya. Based on the discussion in § 7.6, draw a tree structure of (2).

(1) Kii-∅-geeɾ dʒiitɑ tɛɛta.

pst-3sg-see person cow
‘A person saw a cow (long ago).’

(2) Koo-∅-e tuugɑ peek ɑmut.

pst-3pl-drink cows water yesterday
‘The cows drank the water yesterday.’

More work on Kipsigis would be necessary to confirm this (two sentences is not enough to know
the structure of a language), but this chapter gives you enough background to offer a first hy-
pothesis.
Chapter 7: Locality of selection 285

Problem 7.1: Welsh word order

These data are drawn from Roberts (2005), Awbery (1976), Sproat (1985), and Borsley, Tallerman, and
Willis (2007). Some glosses are simplified for the purposes of this problem set.
Welsh is a Celtic language that is spoken in Wales (a part of the United Kingdom). Based
on the initial proposal for VSO word order proposed in § 7.6, come to an analysis of Welsh word
order based on the examples below. Draw trees for (3), (5), and (10).

(1) Diflanodd y dyn.

disappeared the man
‘The man disappeared.’
(2) Gwelodd y dyn y ci.
saw the man the dog
‘The man saw the dog.’
(3) Gwêl y dyn y ci.
sees the man the dog
‘The man sees the dog.’
(4) Gwelai y dyn y ci.
was.seeing the man the dog
‘The man was seeing the dog.’
(5) Gall Ifor ddarllen llyfrau.
can Ifor reading books
‘Ifor can read books.’
(6) Dylai Gwyn ddisgrifio’r llun.
ought Gwyn describe the picture
‘Gwyn ought to describe the picture.’
(7) Prynodd Elin dorth o fara.
buy.pst.3S Elin loaf of bread
‘Elin bought a loaf of bread.’
(8) Gwnaeth Elin brynu torth o fara.
do.pst.3S Elin buy loaf of bread
‘Elin bought a loaf of bread.’
(9) Ddaru Elin brynu torth o fara.
pst Elin buy loaf of bread
‘Elin bought a loaf of bread.’
(10) Ddaru Megan fynd adre.
pst Megan go home
‘Megan went home.’
Chapter 7: Locality of selection 286

Problem 7.2: Fuck all

McCloskey (1993) discusses varieties of English spoken in the British Isles, noting that there is an
emphatic negative quantifier that has an interesting set of properties. (1a) is roughly equivalent
in interpretation to (1b). All examples in this problem are drawn from McCloskey (1993).

(1) a. They wrote fuck all this year.

b. They’ve written absolutely nothing this year.

In general, fuck all is unacceptable in subject position, despite there being paraphrases that
are naturally acceptable.

(2) a. * Fuck all would make us turn back now.

b. * Fuck all surrounds this house.
c. * Fuck all could destroy these walls.
d. * Fuck all would control this mob.
e. * Fuck all will ever increase my wealth.
f. * Fuck all could ever make me trust this government.
g. * Fuck all would refute this hypothesis.
h. * Fuck all around here reminds me of home.
i. * Fuck all supports this roof but a couple of planks.
j. * Fuck all could refute that argument.

(3) a. There’s fuck all (that) would make us turn back now.
b. There’s fuck all (that) could destroy these walls.
c. There’s fuck all (that) could control this mob.
d. There’s fuck all (that) supports this roof but a couple of planks.

Notably, in passive sentences, the derived subject can readily host fuck all.

(4) a. Fuck all has been done about this problem.

b. Absolutely sweet fuck all was achieved by this action.
c. Fuck all has been said about unemployment in the campaign so far.
d. Fuck all was conceded during that strike.

There are also select non-passive verbs that also allow fuck all in subject position.

(5) a. Fuck all ever happens around here.

b. Fuck all else grows in my garden but dandelions.
c. Fuck all emerged from those discussions that would make a body optimistic.
d. Fuck all ever changes around here.
e. Fuck all lasts around here.
f. Fuck all else came my way, so I took the job as a lavatory cleaner.
Chapter 7: Locality of selection 287

g. Fuck all ever starts on time around here.

Questions to answer:
1. What is the natural class that unifies these predicates in (5), as compared to the predicates
in (2)? (A natural class is a grouping based on some similar property of the elements in the
group.)
2. What kinds of arguments can fuck all appear with (and not appear with)? That is, what is
the property of an argument that allows fuck all to occur as that argument?

Problem 7.3: Spanish transitive predicates

Translating predicates from one language to another does not always generate parallel syntactic
structures. Spanish, a Romance language, is one of the most commonly spoken languages across
the world, originating in Spain (Europe). Spanish is an SVO language.

(1) El perro mordió a la niña

the dog bit a the girl
‘The dog bit the girl.’
(2) La niña leyó el libro
the girl read the book
‘The girl read the book.’

Spanish is what is called a null subject language, where discourse-familiar subjects do not require
overt pronominal forms.

(3) Mordió a la niña

bit a the girl
‘It bit the girl.’
(4) Leyó el libro
read the book
‘She/he/they.sg read the book.’

In certain contexts (for example, contrasting or emphasizing subjects) overt pronominal forms
can be used in subject position.

(5) Ella leyó el libro

she read the book
‘SHE read the book.’

Pronominal forms are different for subjects, indirect objects, and direct objects.
Consider the Spanish examples in (6)–(8): there are different pronominal forms for subjects
and objects in Spanish. (Spanish is a null subject language so pronominal subjects can often be
unpronounced; we use the pronounced versions here to demonstrate the relevant grammatical
pattern.)
Chapter 7: Locality of selection 288

(6) Spanish subject pronoun forms

a. Yo como la manzana.
I eat the apple
‘I eat the apple.’
b. Tú ves el libro azul.
You see the book blue
‘You see the blue book.’
c. Ella va a la playa.
She goes to the beach
‘She goes to the beach.’
(7) Spanish indirect object clitic forms
a. La profe me dio la manzana.
The teacher to.me gave the apple
‘The teacher gave me the apple.’
b. Abuelo te dijo la verdad.
Grandfather to.you told the truth
‘Grandpa told you the truth.’
c. Inez le pidió una explicación.
Inez to.her asked.for an explanation
‘Inez asked her for an explanation.’
(8) Spanish direct object clitic forms
a. El zorro me engañó.
The fox me tricked
‘The fox tricked me.’
b. Gloria te busca.
Gloria you look.for
‘Gloria’s looking for you.’
c. Nico la sorprendió con un anillo.
Nico her surprised with a ring
‘Nico surprised her with a ring.’
With that background in place, we can consider the examples below.
We can see examples of typical transitive predicates in Spanish, which can be compared to
their English parallels in the translations.

(9) a. Elena toca la guitarra.

Elena plays the guitar
‘Elena plays the guitar.’
b. Bebo jugo de naranja.
I.drink orange juice
‘I drink orange juice.’
c. Mi abuelo escribía novelas.
my grandfather wrote novels
Chapter 7: Locality of selection 289

‘My grandfather wrote novels.’

Now, consider the sentences below, which show a different pattern.

(10) a. Me gusta el té.

to.me likes the tea
‘I like tea.’
* Yo gusto el té.
b. Me gustan las manzanas.
to.me like the apples
‘I like apples.’
* Yo gusto las manzanas.
c. Me caen bien mis compañeros de trabajo.
to.me like my workmates
‘I like my workmates.’
* Yo cayo bien a mis compañeros de trabajo.
d. Me encantan los perros.
to.me love the dogs
‘I love dogs.’
* Yo encanto los perros.
e. Le duele la cabeza.
to.3sg hurts the head
‘His/her/their.sg head hurts.’
f. Le duelen los pies.
to.3sg hurts the feet
‘His/her/their.sg feet hurt.’

(Examples drawn from here.)

Instructions:
▶ In terms of thematic roles, what are the similarities and differences between Spanish and
English for the sentences provided here? (English parallels are available in the translation
of each Spanish sentence.)
▶ Focusing now on the predicates—what similarities do you see between the predicates that
consistently behave differently in Spanish than they do in English? You can answer descrip-
tively using concepts from this chapter, not using complex formal syntax or semantics.
Chapter 7: Locality of selection 290

Problem 7.4: More fuck all

This problem builds on Problem 7.2 and 7.3, so do those first before coming here.
Why can fuck all appear in the sentences below? Your answer does not need to draw or
reference syntactic trees: you can answer with other concepts from this chapter.

(1) a. Fuck all worries me anymore.

b. Fuck all interests him anymore.
c. Fuck all frightens them.
d. Fuck all bothers them.
e. Fuck all annoys her.
f. Fuck all amuses her.
g. Fuck all surprises her.
h. Fuck all embarrasses her.
(McCloskey 1993)

Problem 7.5: Selection in nonverbal categories

A. Can you think of obligatorily transitive adjectives other than fond?
B. Can you think of plausible candidates for obligatorily intransitive prepositions?
C. What is the syntactic difference between the prepositions in (1a) and (1b)? A syntactic
difference, not a semantic one.

(1) a. at, despite, from, of

b. along, besides, between, by, under

D. Does with belong with the prepositions in (1a) or in (1b)? (For fun, you might ask a few of
your English-speaking peers whether they agree with you.)

Problem 7.6: The causative alternation

The following exercise is adapted from a class handout from Jason Merchant, which is based on Levin
and Hovav (1995)
Many predicates allow for an alternation where the predicate has both an intransitive use
and a transitive use. This alternation is not available for all intransitive predicates, however. What
kinds of predicates are eligible to participate in this alternation, and what kinds are not?

(1) a. The window broke.

b. The child broke the window.

(2) a. The door opened.

b. The wind opened the door.

(3) a. The ship sank.

Chapter 7: Locality of selection 291

b. The torpedo sank the ship.

(4) a. The popsicle melted.

b. The sun melted the popsicle.

(5) a. The crowd laughed.

b. * The comedian laughed the crowd.

(6) a. The actor spoke.

b. * The director spoke the actor.

(7) a. The boy giggled.

b. * The joke giggled the boy.

(8) a. The orchestra played.

b. * The conductor played the orchestra.

(9) a. I jumped.
b. * The scary movie jumped me. (intended: made me jump)

Problem 7.7: Lubukusu locative inversion

We don’t repeat the problem set here, but Problem 4.5 from Chapter 4 is a good exercise that can
be tackled with more precision based on the lessons in this chapter.
Wh-questions: An 8
instance of
A′-movement

Chapter outline
8.1 Basic descriptive terminology for types of questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 293
8.1.1 Yes-no versus wh-questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 293
8.1.2 Direct versus indirect questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 293
8.1.3 Information questions versus echo questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 294
8.2 A movement analysis of questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295
8.2.1 Indirect questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295
8.2.2 Direct questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 300
8.3 Features in syntax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 305
8.3.1 C heads and the force of clauses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 305
8.3.2 Feature-driven operations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 307
8.4 Wh-like movement that is not wh- . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 309
8.4.1 Focus constructions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 309
8.4.2 Topicalization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 312
8.4.3 Movement to non-argument positions (A′ -movement) . . . . . . . . . . . 313
8.5 Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 315
8.6 Exercises and problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 316

In this chapter, we discuss the syntactic structure of questions. We will pursue an insight
already mentioned there and in Chapter 7—namely, that forming wh-questions is a combina-
tion of replacing a constituent by a suitable wh-phrase and moving it to the beginning of the
sentence (wh-movement). The first section of the chapter gives a basic introduction to the
syntax of questions. The next section presents the syntactic derivation of wh-questions, which
extends straightforwardly to yes-no questions. We use the observations about these construc-
tion to propose that the Force of a clause (whether it is a statement or a question) is explained by
clause-typing features on C◦ . We conclude by showing that the properties of wh-movement are
not special to wh-movement, but are instead a particular instance of a more general category of
movement that we call A′ -movement. Additional types of A′ -movement include topicalization
and focus constructions.
Chapter 8: Wh-questions: An instance of A′ -movement 293

Basic descriptive terminology for types of questions 8.1

8.1.1 Yes-no versus wh-questions

Questions can be divided into yes-no questions (also known as polar questions) and wh-
questions (also known as constituent questions, or content questions), according to the expected
answer. As the name implies, the answer to a yes-no question is either “yes” or “no”. And again,
as the name implies, wh-questions utilize a wh-expression (who, what, which, where, when, why)
in English. How counts as a wh-expression by virtue of its meaning (questioning a constituent),
even though it doesn’t begin with wh-.
The distinction between the two question types is illustrated in (1) and (2).

(1) Yes-no question:

Q: Has he called?
A: { Yes, no }.
(2) Wh-question:
a. Q: Who just came in?
A: The boy from next door.
b. Q: Who(m) did you invite?
A: All my friends.
c. Q: When did she call?
A: After dinner.
d. Q: Why did he do that?
A: Out of ignorance.
e. Q: How did you fix it?
A: With the right tool.

8.1.2 Direct versus indirect questions

Another distinction that can be drawn is between direct questions and indirect questions.
Direct questions are main clauses, whereas indirect questions are part of a larger matrix sentence
(that may or may not itself be a question). Direct questions are generally used to elicit infor-
mation. They are associated with characteristic intonation contours, which are represented in
standard orthography in many languages by a question mark. Indirect questions are generally
used to report about direct questions and are not associated with a special intonation.
The questions in (1) and (2) are all direct questions. The corresponding indirect questions
are given in (3) and (4), enclosed in square brackets.1

(3) Indirect yes-no question:

I can’t remember [ { whether, if } he has called ].
Chapter 8: Wh-questions: An instance of A′ -movement 294

(4) Indirect wh-question:

a. I can’t remember [ who just came in ].
b. I can’t remember [ who(m) you invited ].
c. I can’t remember [ when she called ].
d. I can’t remember [ why he did that ].
e. I can’t remember [ how you fixed it ].

8.1.3 Information questions versus echo questions

Ordinarily, speakers use questions to elicit information, potentially initiating a discourse with
them, as in (5).

(5) a. How do you do?

b. What’s up?

But questions can also be used to signal a failure to understand the previous move in a con-
versation. The failure to understand can be genuine or feigned (calculated to express surprise,
disapproval, outrage, and so on). Accordingly, we can distinguish between information ques-
tions and echo questions (also known as reprise questions); the latter two terms underline the
response character of the second type of question. Echo questions can have the same syntactic
form as information questions, but they are associated with a melody that is quite distinct from
that of information questions. Speakers can also further mark the special discourse function of
echo questions by giving them a special syntactic form in which the wh-phrase does not undergo
wh-movement. The wh-phrase is said to remain in situ. (6) and (7) illustrates the two forms that
echo questions can take (with or without wh-movement).

(6) A: Over break, I ended up visiting my [unintelligible]

B: Who did you end up visiting? (wh-movement)
You ended up visiting who? (wh-in situ)
(7) A: Her parents burned all of her clothes.
B: What did they do⁈ (wh-movement)
They did what⁈ (wh-in situ)

The association of the wh-in situ form with the echo function is not universal. Some lan-
guages do not have wh-movement at all see Chapter 14 for discussion), and some wh-movement
languages allow wh-in situ questions to serve as either information questions or echo questions.
This is illustrated for French in (8) (Engdahl 2006, 104, (33)–(34)).

(8) a. A: Ton fils, il lit quoi? (information question)

your son he reads what
‘What does your son read?’
B: Des bandes desinées.
of.the comics
‘Comics.’
Chapter 8: Wh-questions: An instance of A′ -movement 295

b. A: Mon fils, il lit [inaudible]? (echo question)

my son he reads
‘My son reads …’
B: Il lit quoi?
he reads what
‘He reads what?’

A movement analysis of questions 8.2

8.2.1 Indirect questions

We begin our analysis of questions by considering indirect questions. This may seem counter-
intuitive, but it is actually a more direct path to understanding the structure of questions than if
we were to begin with direct questions. As the presence of the complementizer if in (9) shows,
the verb wonder takes a CP complement.

(9) They wonder if the lions will devour the zebra.

The elementary trees for wonder and if are given in (10a)–(10b), and the entire tree for (9) is given
in (10c). Notice that our DP subject is now a part of the VP elementary tree, a product of local
selection/VPISH.

(10) a. VP b. CP

»DP« V′ C′

V◦ »CP« C◦ »IP«
wonder if
Chapter 8: Wh-questions: An instance of A′ -movement 296

c. IP

DPi I′

they I◦ VP
[pRs]
ti V′

V◦ CP
wonder
C′

C◦ IP
if
DPk I′

the lions I◦ VP
will
tk V′

V◦ DP
devour
the zebra

Now consider the indirect question in (11), which begins with a wh-phrase (a maximal
projection) rather than with a complementizer (a head).

(11) They wonder which zebra the lions will devour.

Let’s adopt the null hypothesis that wonder is associated with the same elementary tree in (11) as it
is in (9)—namely, with (10a). Since (11) contains no overt complementizer, the CP that substitutes
into the complement node of wonder must then be the projection of a silent complementizer. For
reasons to be given shortly, we take this complementizer to be a silent counterpart of that. In
deriving the tree for (11), a further difficulty arises concerning the wh-phrase which zebra. On the
one hand, the wh-phrase must be the object of devour, just as in (9), because devour is obligatorily
transitive. But on the other hand, the wh-phrase precedes the subject of the subordinate clause
rather than following the verb. As usual when we are confronted with a mismatch of this sort,
we invoke movement in order to allow a single phrase to simultaneously play more than one role
in a sentence. Specifically, we will first substitute the wh-phrase into the complement node of
devour and then move it to Spec(CP). This allows us to accommodate the word order in (11), while
maintaining the status of devour as a transitive verb regardless of which clause type (declarative or
interrogative) it happens to occur in. The requisite elementary tree for the silent complementizer
is shown in (12); by contrast to the elementary tree for if, it contains a specifier node for the wh-
phrase. The full structure of the wh-phrase that moves to that specifier node is shown in (12b).
The resulting structure for (11) is shown in (12c).
Chapter 8: Wh-questions: An instance of A′ -movement 297

(12) a. CP b. DP

»XP[wh] « C′ D′

C◦ »IP« D◦ NP
∅that which
[wh,q] N′

N◦
zebra
c. IP

DPi I′

they I◦ VP
[pRs]
ti V′

V◦ CP
wonder
DPk C′

which zebra C◦ IP
∅that
[wh,q] DPm I′

the lions I◦ VP
will
tm V′

V◦ tk
devour

We annotate C◦ in these structures with q features (marking it as interrogative) and wh fea-

tures (marking it as a wh-construction), distinguishing it from non-wh-constructions). We will
comment more on these annotations in § 8.3.2.
The argument just presented is based on the obligatorily transitive character of devour, but
it extends straightforwardly to other syntactic relations—for instance, modification. Recall that
the way that we represent the modification relation is to adjoin the modifier at the intermediate
projection of the head that is being modified. In (13a), the adverb phrase unbelievably quickly
modifies the verb devour, and so it adjoins at V′ . In (13b), the corresponding wh-phrase how
quickly also modifies devour, so it needs to adjoin to V′ as well, but it precedes the subject.

(13) a. The lions will devour the zebra unbelievably quickly.

Chapter 8: Wh-questions: An instance of A′ -movement 298

b. They wonder how quickly the lions will devour the zebra.

Again, we resolve the mismatch between the position where the phrase is interpreted and where
it is pronounced by first adjoining the modifier to the embedded VP and then moving it to the
embedded Spec(CP). (14a) shows the full structure of the phrase that undergoes movement, and
(14b) shows the structure of the entire question.

(14) a. AdvP

Adv′

AdvP Adv′

Adv′ Adv◦
quickly
Adv◦
how
b. IP

DPi I′

they I◦ VP
[pRs]
ti V′

V◦ CP
wonder
AdvPk C′

how C◦ IP
quickly ∅that
[wh,q] DPm I′

the I◦ VP
lions will
tm V′

V′ tk

V◦ DP
devour
the
zebra
Chapter 8: Wh-questions: An instance of A′ -movement 299

Why a silent complementizer?

Let’s delve a bit deeper into why we treat the complementizer in (12) and in (14) as a silent coun-
terpart of that. There are several reasons. First, Middle English (1150–1500) routinely allowed
(though it did not require) overt that as the head of indirect wh-questions. The examples in (15)
are all from texts by Chaucer that are part of the Penn-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Middle English;
(a)–(b) show that that alternated with its silent counterpart even within a single sentence by a
single author.2

(15) a. he wiste wel hymself what that he wolde answere (cmctmeli.m3, 219.C1.75)
‘he himself knew well what he would answer’
b. for ye han ful ofte assayed … how wel that I kan hyde and hele thynges (cmctmeli.m3,
221.C1.149)
‘for you have very often determined how well … I can hide and conceal things’

Second, contemporary Belfast English (the variety of English that is the focus of Exercise
1.4) resembles Middle English in this respect (Henry 1995, 107).

(16) a. I wonder which dish that they picked.

b. They didn’t know which model that we had discussed.

Third, wh-phrases followed by that continue to be attested in the unplanned usage of speak-
ers of modern Mainstream U.S. English (Radford 1988, 500). A few of the examples that we have
collected over the years are shown in (17).

(17) a. I realized how interesting that it was.

(Clara Orsitti, interviewed by Vicky Barker, World Update, National Public Radio, 25
January 1999)
b. Most of my colleagues were amazed how quickly that I recovered.
(advertisement for Temple University Hospital, WRTI, 24 November 1999)
c. “These recounts will determine how much of a pick-up that we will have”, said Demo-
cratic National Committee Chairman Joe Andrew.
(https://www.cnn.com/2000/ALLPOLITICS/stories/11/08/house.races/)

Finally, sequences of wh-phrase and overt complementizer in indirect questions occur in

languages other than English. The complementizer in question is generally the counterpart of
that, but the counterpart of if is attested as well.

(18) Bavarian (Bayer 1983, 212, (8a–d)):

a. I woass ned wer dass des toa hod.
I know not who that that done has
‘I don’t know who did that.’
b. … wos dass ma toa soin.
what that we do should
‘…what we should do.’
Chapter 8: Wh-questions: An instance of A′ -movement 300

c. … wann dass da Xaver kumt.

when that the comes
‘…when Xaver is coming.’
d. … wiavui dass a kriagt.
how.much that he gets
‘…how much he gets.’
(19) Dutch (Besten 1989, 23, (21b)):
a. welk boek (of ) hij wil lezen
which book if he wants read
‘…which book he wants to read’

Many African languages display overt complementizer material alongside moved elements
in both embedded and matrix contexts, as the normal state of things. We will see more examples
of this as we go along, but we illustrate here from Lubukusu. Both the examples in (20) show the
wh-word siina ‘what’ appearing at the left edge of a clause (in green, underlined): an embedded
clause in (20a) and a main clause in (20b). In both instances, a complementizer that agrees with
the wh-phrase (in red bold) appears adjacent, exactly where we would expect if the wh-phrase is
moving to Spec,CP.

(20) Lubukusu complementizers alongside wh-words (Wasike 2007, 166)3

a. Wafula a-a-loma ali siina ni-syo Nekesa a-kha-a-rema ta?
1Wafula 1-pst-say saying what comp-agR 1Nekesa 1agR-neg-pst-cut neg
“What did Wafula say Nekesa didn’t cut?”
b. siina ni-syo Wafula a-kha-a-loma a-li Nekesa a-a-rema ta?
What comp-agR 1Wafula 1-neg-pst-say-fv saying 1Nekesa 1agR-pst-cut neg
“What didn’t Wafula say Nekesa cut?”

We therefore see a similar pattern across a broad range of languages: wh-movement is targeting
a specifier position of CP. Sometimes C◦ is overt (that is, pronounced), sometimes it is not.

8.2.2 Direct questions

Direct wh-questions
Having argued that wh-phrases move to Spec(CP) in indirect questions, we assume for uniformity
that the same is true for direct questions like (21).

(21) a. [DP Which zebra ] will the lions devour?

b. [AdvP How quickly ] will the lions devour the zebra?
c. [AdjP How experienced ] should they be?
d. [PP Under which shell ] will they hide the pea?

As is evident from comparing the direct questions in (21) with their indirect question coun-
terparts, wh-movement in direct questions is accompanied by movement of the modal from its
ordinary position after the subject to a position immediately preceding the subject. Because this
Chapter 8: Wh-questions: An instance of A′ -movement 301

is movement of a head, we will refer to this type of movement as head movement. The partic-
ular instance of head movement at issue here is often called subject-aux inversion.4 In what
follows, we will focus on questions with modals. Questions with auxiliary and ordinary verbs
involve complications that are not relevant here; see Chapter 12.
We will begin by assuming that the CP involved in the derivation of direct questions is
headed by a morpheme expressing interrogative (= information-seeking) force. Despite the for-
mal (= structural) similarity between direct and indirect questions, indirect questions do not have
this same basic pragmatic force. In some languages, such as Japanese, Swahili, and Shona, the
question morpheme is overt, as illustrated in (22). (The nom and acc morphemes in Japanese are
called case markers and can be ignored for the moment: Chapter 9 discusses case.) The differ-
ent positions of the question particles in these languages suggests the C head that hosts them is
head-final in Japanese and Shona and is head-initial in Swahili.

(22) Japanese declarative and interrogative

a. 誰かが 寿司を 食べました。 Japanese
Dareka-ga sushi-o tabe-mashi-ta.
someone-nom sushi-acc eat-pol-pst
‘Someone ate the sushi.’
b. 誰が 寿司を 食べました か？
Dare-ga sushi-o tabe-mashi-ta ka?
who-nom sushi-acc eat-pol-pst q
‘Who ate the sushi?’

(23) Swahili declarative and interrogative

a. U-na-enda nyumba-ni. Swahili
2sg-pRes-go home-loc
‘You are going home.’
b. Je, u-na-enda wapi?
q 2sg-pRes-go where
‘Where are you going?’

(24) Shona declarative vs. interrogative (König and Siemund 2007a)

a. ndì-nó-tàùrà Shona
1.sg-pRs-speak
‘I speak.’
b. ndì-nó-tàùr-à hèré?
1.sg-pRs-speak q
‘Do I speak?’

In contrast to these languages, the question morpheme in English is silent. This gives us
(25a) as the counterpart to if in (10b), and (25b) as the direct-question counterpart to the indirect
question in (10c), pending subject-aux inversion (in Mainstream U.S. English; English varieties
differ in their subject-aux inversion properties).
Chapter 8: Wh-questions: An instance of A′ -movement 302

(25) a. CP

»XP« C′

C◦ »IP«
[q]
b. CP

DPk C′

which zebra C◦ IP
[wh,q]
DPi I′

the lions I◦ VP
will
ti V′

V◦ tk
devour

Head movement
However, in mainstream varieties of English, direct questions require inversion (in contrast to
(25b)). In the two cases of movement that we have considered so far (subject movement in Chap-
ter 7 and wh-movement in this chapter), the “landing site” of movement has been a substitution
node in an elementary tree. But this option is not available in the case of subject-aux inversion.
The modal in I◦ cannot substitute in C◦, because C◦ is already filled by the question morpheme.
We can’t simply allow the modal to overwrite the question morpheme, since then the tree would
not contain the information necessary to generate the proper question intonation. We also want
to continue to say that elementary trees are projections of lexical items. In other words, we do
not want to allow elementary trees as in (26), which consist solely of substitution nodes.

(26) CP

C′ ← not a possible elementary tree!

»C◦« »IP«

As a result of these considerations, we will implement movement of the modal to the pre-
subject position via adjunction rather than with substitution. We use the same formal definition
of adjunction in Chapter 5, § 5.3. That is, we first select the target of adjunction, then clone that
target, and finally attach the adjoining element (here, the modal undergoing movement) as the
daughter of the higher clone. (27) shows the operation on the relevant heads in isolation.
Chapter 8: Wh-questions: An instance of A′ -movement 303

(27) a. C◦ b. C◦ c. C◦
[q]
C◦ I◦ C◦
[q] modal [q]

Select target of Clone target of Attach modal

adjunction adjunction

(28) shows the final structure for the direct question. Just like the moved phrases, the
moved head bears a unique index linking it to its trace.

(28) CP

DPi C′

which zebra C◦ IP

I◦k C◦ DPm I′
will [wh,q]
the lions I◦k VP

tm V′

V◦ ti
devour

Although the formal operation of adjunction is defined in exactly the same way regardless
of the use to which we put it, the two uses are associated with differences. First and foremost,
the operation represents different linguistic relations in the two cases. As we already know from
Chapter 5, § 5.3, adjunction can represent the modification relation, which corresponds to a se-
mantic subset relation. In the case of head movement, adjunction represents an entirely different
linguistic relation. In this case, we can think of the structure formed by adjunction as a mor-
phologically complex head—or to put it more colloquially, as a compound word. In Chapter 12,
we will invoke head movement to combine verb stems with tense suffixes to form finite verbs.
In that case, the position of the tense suffix tells us that the verb left-adjoins to I◦. By analogy,
we assume that I◦ in the case at hand left-adjoins also; in other words, we are treating the silent
question morpheme as a suffix, just like any other inflectional morpheme in English. Second,
the projection level of the target node differs; it is an intermediate projection for modification
versus a head for head movement. Third, the projection level of the adjoining element differs.
It is a maximal projection for modification versus a head for head movement. Finally, for mod-
ification, the adjoining element is not yet part of the structure, and adjunction is “pure” in the
sense that it doesn’t involve concomitant movement. For head movement, the adjoining element
Chapter 8: Wh-questions: An instance of A′ -movement 304

is already part of the structure, and hence movement is involved. Table 8.1 summarizes the above
discussion.

Use of adjunction for … Modification Head movement

Adjunction structure represents … semantic restriction morphological relation
Target of adjunction intermediate projection head
Adjoining node maximal projection head
Adjoining node already part of structure? no yes
(= Movement involved?)

Table 8.1: Comparison of adjunction in modification and head movement

Yes-no questions
As we have already seen, the elementary trees required to derive indirect questions can either
include a specifier, as in (12a), or not, as in (10b). As expected given the generality of the X′
schema, the same is true of the elementary trees for direct questions. In particular, the question
morpheme in (25a) has a variant without a specifier, as shown in (29). Here, there is a [q] feature
marking the CP as interrogative, but no [wh] feature as it is not a wh-question. There is likewise
no position for a wh-specifier in this instance, as it is not a [wh]-marked CP.

(29) CP

C′

C◦ »IP«
[q]

Using this elementary tree allows us to derive yes-no questions like (30), whose structure is shown
in (31).

(30) Will the lions devour the zebra?

Chapter 8: Wh-questions: An instance of A′ -movement 305

(31) CP

C′

C◦ IP

I◦i C◦ DPk I′
will [q]
the lions I◦i VP

tk V′

V◦ DP
devour
the zebra

The direct question in (30) corresponds to the indirect yes-no question in (9) that we began
our investigation with. So we now have structures for all four question types that result from
crossing direct versus indirect questions with wh- versus yes-no questions.

Features in syntax 8.3

8.3.1 C heads and the force of clauses

Traditional grammar distinguishes three main types of illocutionary force, that is, three differ-
ent things that a speaker can be doing with a sentence. These kinds of illocutionary force are 1)
declarative (statements), 2) interrogative (questions), and 3) imperative (commands). As we noted
above, the word order of English questions forces us to add a CP projection to the IP projection
that we have been using to represent declaratives: this allows us to capture subject-auxiliary in-
version via movement of I◦ to C◦ . To distinguish this kind of C◦ we posited a [q] feature on C to
mark it as a question.
In the interests of uniformity, it is sensible to represent ordinary declarative sentences as
CPs also, with a head encoding the declarative illocutionary force. That is, if the feature marking
a phrase structure as a question arises on C, and we think that CP is the locus of defining a clause’s
illocutionary force, we would expect the marking of declaratives to also be accomplished at C.
And in fact, this is the conclusion of most syntacticians, that all main clauses are in fact CPs even
when we don’t see an overt morpheme or phrase residing in CP.
Generally we will mark the C head as bearing the feature [decl], designating a declarative
sentence (paired with [q] for interrogatives. These are arbitrary choices of course—we could even
use punctuation marks to represent force—[.], [?], and [!] (for imperatives), for example. The
Chapter 8: Wh-questions: An instance of A′ -movement 306

point is that what we call the features isn’t magical, it is an annotation strategy that formalizes
and systematizes our theory. We don’t always draw the CP when drawing the tree of a sentence;
as is typical, trees are communicative devices, and we draw the portion of a tree that is relevant
to what we are trying to communicate. But the baseline assumption at this point is that all main
clauses are in fact CPs.

(32) CP-hypothesis:
All main clauses are CPs.

These distinctions are marked overtly in a number of languages, making more clear why we
might want to encode these notions of clause force in our syntactic structures. For example, West
Greenlandic clauses bear a morpheme that communicates whether the sentence is a declarative
(33a), an interrogative (33b), or an imperative (33c).5

(33) West Greenlandic (Sadock 1984 and Sadock and Zwicky 1985, via König and Siemund
2007b)

a. Iga -voq.
cook -decl.agR
‘He cooks.’
b. Iga -va?
cook -q.agR
‘Does he cook?’
c. Iga -git!
cook -imp.agR
‘Cook (something)!’

We see that same pattern appear in Northern Mao, an Afroasiatic language in the Omotic family
spoken in western Ethiopia. Northern Mao is a verb-final language that marks clause type on
the verb forms with a declarative marker (/-á/), an interrogative marker (/-àː/), or an imperative
marker that agrees with the addressee, we show the 2nd singular form here.

(34) Northern Mao declarative, interrogative, and imperative (Ahland 2012)

a. Míːm-íʃ tí-ná ha-k’ots’-á.
mosquito-sbj 1sg-obj aff-bite-decl
‘A mosquito bit me.’
b. Kó-ʃ hì-nà k’ots’-àː?
what-sbj 2sg-obj bite-q
‘What bit you?’
c. Kiːm-na tjám-í!
money-obj count:inf-imp.agR
‘Count the moneyǃ’

While not all languages have overt morphology in C◦ marking illocutionary force, all lan-
guages do have declarative sentences, interrogative sentences, and imperative sentences. Assum-
Chapter 8: Wh-questions: An instance of A′ -movement 307

ing that these interpretations are part of the syntactic structure, we mark clause type on C heads
in all instances.
The CP hypothesis means that even in sentences where we might not overtly observe a
CP, we nonetheless assume a CP which is at minimum marking the force of the sentence. So we
assume that a basic declarative sentence like (35a) has a structure as in (35b), headed by a CP that
bears a feature marking the sentence as a declarative.

(35) a. The lions will devour the zebra.

b. CP

C′

C◦ IP
[decl]
DPi I′

the lions I◦ VP
will
ti V′

V◦ DP
devour
the zebra

Whether or not we specifically annotate the [decl] feature depends on what the point
of any specific discussion is. But all sentences need to have their illocutionary force specified,
which means that all sentences are CPs at their root node, headed by a C◦ that has relevant force
features.

8.3.2 Feature-driven operations

Implicit in the preceding discussion is that, in the model we are developing, properties of syn-
tax/semantics are denoted by features, which are essentially annotations in our model that make
precise where a property of grammar resides syntactically. Specifically, operations in syntax like
movement and agreement are assumed to be feature-driven. So in the discussion above, we don’t
simply assert that heads move to C◦ , or that wh-phrases move to Spec,CP. This is annotated in
the model via features on C◦ : [q] and [wh] drive each of these movements, respectively.
The goal is for the structures that we adopt to generate the resulting sentences with all
relevant information included in those structures. The structures we arrive at in an analysis are
of course based on our knowledge of the language data, but we are trying to use those data to
reverse engineer what the system must be—the system we arrive at can’t also require personal
analyst knowledge of the sort like “oh yeah and then X happens.” Instead, we want our analyses
to essentially be like a computer algorithm—specifying all the information necessary to generate
the resulting grammatical or ungrammatical sentences.
Chapter 8: Wh-questions: An instance of A′ -movement 308

This is why we assume that any operations that occur in syntax are feature-driven. So we
don’t simply assert that wh-movement moves to Spec,CP when we happen to want it to: as part
of our analysis, we put a [wh] feature on C◦ that specifies that movement of a wh-phrase occurs
to the specifier of CP. So our analysis also requires a notion that the system can check to confirm
that a feature has been satisfied in the course of building our sentence.
In our model, this is the normal course of things. In instances of dependencies where two
positions in the syntax are connected in some way (like in instance of movement) we assume that
both positions have relevant features that encode this relationship. So in the case of movement,
the moved phrase is expected to bear some feature—we can call it F for the schematic in (36)—and
the position where the phrase will move to is marked with feature [F] as well.6

(36) ZP

Z′

Z◦ XP
[F]
X′

X◦ YP

Y′

Y◦ MP

…DP[F] …

The result of a configuration like (36) (in the instance of movement) therefore looks like (37),
where the two F-marked phrases end up in a close structural configuration, here a so-called “spec-
head relationship” where the [F]-marked DP is in the specifier of the head that bears the relevant
feature [F].

(37) ZP

DP[F] Z′

Z◦ XP
[F]
…DP[F] …

We will leave the nature of the connection between the two annotations of feature F here
relatively vague for the time being, but in the next chapter we get more specific about the be-
havior of features in syntax. The lesson to take away for now is that we are starting to annotate
movements like this via features in the syntax.
Chapter 8: Wh-questions: An instance of A′ -movement 309

Wh-like movement that is not wh- 8.4

Wh-movement in English (and in many other languages!) consists of movement of a question
word to the left edge of the sentence (a domain that syntacticians often call the left periphery). But
it is not the only such movement: there are other kinds of movement to the left edge of clauses that
show the same properties as wh-movement, but are not instances of wh-questions. Syntacticians
have concluded that wh-movement is one instance of a broader class of movements that we call
A′ -movements (read: A-bar movements); we discuss the terminology more below.

8.4.1 Focus constructions

English has some remnants of movements like this, but they are simply not as robustly present
in English as they are in other languages.

Take Note

A possibly-new notation:
▶ *(X) = X is obligatorily present (the sentence is ungrammatical without X)
▶ (*X) = X is obligatorily absent (the sentence is ungrammatical with X)

Gungbe focus and wh-

Gungbe is a Kwa language from the Niger-Congo family, spoken in West Africa. The variety
reported here is from Porto-Novo, Benin, with all of these data from (Aboh 2004). Gungbe is
canonically an SVO language.7

(38) a. Sɛ́ná xìá wémà.

Sena read-pRf book
‘Sena read a book.’
b. Sɛ́ná xìá wémà lɔ́.
Sena read-pRf book the
‘Sena read the specific book.’

Wh-questions in Gungbe are unsurprising based on what we have covered thus far for
English. In an object question as in (39a), for example, the wh-object does not appear in its
canonical postverbal position and instead is in the left periphery, adjacent to a complementizer
element (which we gloss as comp for the moment).

(39) a. Ɛ́tɛ́k *(wɛ̀ ) Sɛ́ná xìá tk? Object information question

what *(comp) Sena read-pRf
‘What did Sena read?’
Chapter 8: Wh-questions: An instance of A′ -movement 310

b. [ Wémà tɛ́ ]k *(wɛ̀ ) Sɛ́ná xìá tk? Object information question

book which *(comp) Sena read-pRf
‘Which book did Sena read?’
c. Mɛ́núk *(wɛ̀ ) t k xìá wémà lɔ́? Subject information question
who *(comp) read-pRf book spf[+def]
‘Who read the specific book?’

Now, consider the constructions in (40), which are instances of focus constructions. Fo-
cus is a grammatical tool in human languages that highlights/emphasizes new or noteworthy
information.8

(40) a. Sɛ́nák *(wɛ̀ ) t k xìá wémà. Subject focus

Sena *(comp) read-pRf book
‘SENA read a book.’
b. Wémàk *(wɛ̀ ) Sɛ́ná xìá tk. Object focus
book *(comp) Sena read-pRf
‘Sena read A BOOK.’

Mainstream U.S. English communicates focus in a variety of ways—sometimes this is done

purely with intonation, saying a word louder, longer, and higher pitched (this is what the all-caps
denotes in the translations in (40)). But we also have syntactic constructions, like our it-clefts that
we were using as a constituency diagnostics (It is Sena that read a book). And like with English
focus, in Gungbe it’s possible to focus many different kinds of constituents, like an adverb in (41a)
and a PP in (41b).

(41) a. [ Bléún ] wɛ̀ Sɛ́ná gbá xwé étɔ̀ n. Focus on an adverb

quickly comp Sena build-pRf house his
‘Sena QUICKLY built his house.’
b. [ Távò lɔ́ jí ] wɛ̀ Sɛ́ná zé gò lɛ́ ɖó.
table spf[+def] on comp Sena put-pRf bottle num loc
Focus on a location phrase
‘Sena put the bottles ON THE SPECIFIC TABLE.’

Lubukusu focus and wh-

Lubukusu is a Bantu language of the Luyia subgroup that is spoken in Western Kenya.9 Lubukusu
shows a pattern quite similar to Gungbe, where wh-phrases can appear in the left periphery of an
interrogative sentence. In each instance, a complementizer element appears directly to the right
of the fronted wh-phrase.

(42) a. Nafula a-a-siima Wafula (Wasike 2007, 234)

1Nafula 1sm-pRs-love 1Wafula
‘Nafula loves Wafula.’
b. naanu *(ni-ye) Nafula a-a-sima?
1who comp-1agR 1Nafula 1sm-pRs-love-
‘Who is it that Nafula loves?’
Chapter 8: Wh-questions: An instance of A′ -movement 311

(43) ba-ba-ana ba-a-funa lu-u-saala Declarative

2-2-child 2sm-pst-break 11-11-stick
‘The children broke the stick.’
(44) Siina ni-syo Wamalwa a-a-funa? Wh-object cleft
7what comp-7 1Wamalwa 1sm-pst-break
‘What was it that Wamalwa broke?’
(45) naanu ni-bo ba-ba-a-funa lu-u-saala? Wh-subject cleft
2who comp-2 2agR-2sm-pst-break 11-11-stick
‘Who were they that broke the stick?’
(Wasike 2007, 117–119)

And as we can see from (46), focus constructions show the same syntax: a focused element can
appear at the left edge of the sentence immediately preceding the same complementizer ele-
ment.

(46) a. lu-u-saala ni-lwo Wamalwa a-a-funa Object cleft

11-11-stick comp-11 1Wamalwa 1sm-pst-break
‘It was a stick that Wamalwa broke.’
b. ba-ba-ana ni-bo ba-ba-a-funa lu-u-saala Subject cleft
2-2-children comp-2 2agR-2sm-past-break 11-11-stick
‘It was children who broke the stick.’

Modeling left-peripheral focus constructions

We can model focus constructions like these in exactly the same way that we did for wh-
movement in English: a feature of the relevant sort (a focus feature, in this instance) on a CP-level
head.

(47) CP

XP[foc] C′

C◦ IP
[foc]
…XP[foc] …

The parallels with wh-movement should be evident: a feature on C◦ attracts a phrase with
the same feature. When C◦ bears a [wh] feature it attracts a wh-phrase, and when C◦ bears a
focus feature, it attracts a focused phrase.
Chapter 8: Wh-questions: An instance of A′ -movement 312

8.4.2 Topicalization
We turn now to topicalization, another kind of emphatic construction which, instead of marking
new/noteworthy information like focus, is used to mark old/familiar information, or is used to
describe what the sentence is about. In English topicalization is at times accomplished by fronting
a phrase, or by using an as for-construction as in (49).

(48) a. [AdvP Unbelievably quickly, ] the lions will devour the zebra.
b. [AdjP Quick as a wink, ] the cat hid under the covers.
c. [PP Over the next few days, ] the snow will melt.

(49) a. As for the zebras, the lions will devour them quickly.
b. As for the lions, they will devour the zebras quickly.

Based on what we’ve been concluding to this point, it is natural here to assume that these
topicalized phrases are in Spec,CP.
It is quite common for languages to also show complementizer heads in topic positions
in the same way we have concluded for focused phrases and wh-phrases above, relating the left-
peripheral topic position to some other position of the topicalized element inside the clause.

(50) CP

XP[top] C′

C◦ IP
[top]

As we see in the English examples in (48) and (49), topicalization constructions sometimes
differ in whether they relate to some position inside the clause or not. It is common for topical-
ization to have a resumptive pronoun inside the clause, as in (49), where there is a pronoun
that refers to the topicalized phrase. We see a similar kind of pattern in Gungbe: in the same
place that a focus marker appears in focused constructions, a topic marker appears in topic posi-
tions. But a key difference between topic and focus in Gungbe is that topic constructions have a
resumptive pronoun inside the clause inside the sentence in what would be considered the “base”
position of the topic (circled in (51)).

(51) Dàn lɔ́ yà, kòfí hù -ì

snake the top Kofi kill.pfv-3sg
‘As for the snake, Kofi killed it.’

A large area of research is whether topics in sentences like (51) consist of movement of the
topic to the left periphery (in which case the resumptive pronoun would be considered an overt
realization of the trace of movement) or whether the topic is base-generated (i.e., first enters
the structure) in CP, and is not connected to the lower position by movement. It appears that
Chapter 8: Wh-questions: An instance of A′ -movement 313

languages can choose between these options; it’s a highly interesting domain of research, but
goes beyond what we will cover in an introductory text.
Some languages don’t have an overt C head marking Topics, but nonetheless clearly mark
topicalized phrases. Just as Japanese has an overt question morpheme ka, so, too, does it have
an overt topic morpheme -wa. However, the topic morpheme isn’t attached to the verb, but is
instead marking the topicalized element itself. Some examples are given in (52). (Subjects and
direct objects are marked in Japanese with the particles -ga and -o, respectively, but both can be
overriden by -wa.)

(52) a. 子供は りんごを 食べました。

Kodomo-wa ringo-o tabe-mashi-ta.
child-top apple-acc eat-pol-pst
‘As for the child, they.sg ate the apple.’
b. りんごは 子供が 食べました。
Ringo-wa kodomo-ga tabe-mashi-ta.
apple-top child-nom eat-pol-pst
‘As for the apple, the child ate it.’

8.4.3 Movement to non-argument positions (A′ -movement)

We don’t mean to imply here that topicalization, focus, and wh-constructions are all identical—
they clearly have differences. But they do share crucial properties. It quite common cross-
linguistically for them to target left-peripheral position of the clause, which we model as them
appearing in Spec,CP. For each, we can assume that the relevant feature resides on C◦ in each
instance: [wh], [top], or [foc]. Not all languages do topicalization, focus, or even content ques-
tions via movement to Spec,CP, but it is an extraordinarily common pattern cross-linguistically
across completely unrelated languages. That is to say, it is much too common to be a coincidence
that these properties are marked at the CP level, which points to these properties of CP being
something quite general about human languages as a whole.
Beyond typically targeting Spec,CP, these movements often share a variety of other prop-
erties too. Some of these we don’t have the background to cover yet, but we begin to introduce
their shared properties around binding effects in Chapter 15. Other effects we can observe based
on our current knowledge: for example, movements in syntax tend to be highly local—for exam-
ple, heads move to the immediate next head: we have seen instances of V◦ moving to I◦ , and of I◦
moving to C◦ . But wh-movement, topicalization, and focus movements appear to be much more
long-distance. In many of our examples here, the relevant phrase moved from object position or
adjunct position in the VP all the way to CP. So this relatively unbounded distance of movement
is typical of these movements but not of head movements.
Because there are predictable shared properties between these kinds of movements, syntac-
ticians have grouped them together, calling them all instances of a single kind of movement that
we call A′ -movement (pronounced “A-bar movement”). The terminology is unfortunate because
this does not relate to bar levels in X′ -syntax. It is meant to contrast with a kind of movement
we’ll talk about in Chapter 10 that we call A-movement, that has different properties. So rather
than A′ -movement having anything to do with bar-levels in X′ syntax, it is better to think of
Chapter 8: Wh-questions: An instance of A′ -movement 314

it as “non-A-movement.” A-movement is movement to an argument position (A-position); our

movement of subjects to Spec,IP is an instance of A-movement. Since Spec,IP is the typical sub-
ject position (an argument position, or A-position), movement to that position are A-movements.
The movements to Spec,CP that we have discussed in this chapter, in contrast, are not desig-
nated for a particular sort of argument (or for arguments at all: adjuncts readily participate in
wh-movement). So these are movements to a non-argument position, i.e. an A′ -position, and
hence are considered A′ -movement.
The main point is that wh-movement is not the only kind of movement that has these
properties: focalization and topicalization often behave similarly, both utilizing A′ -movement in
many languages.

New Empirical Observations

▶ There is a mismatch between where wh-phrase is pronounced and where it is inter-

preted in wh-questions.
▶ Questions in English require inversion of inflection (auxiliaries) and subjects.

Components of the Theoretical Model

▶ movement
▷ A′ -movement (movement to non-argument positions)
▼ wh-movement
▼ focus movement
▼ topicalization
▷ head-movement (via head-adjunction)
▶ feature-driven operations
▷ foc, top, wh features on C◦
▷ q features driving I◦ -to-C◦ movement
▶ traces/unpronounced copies
▶ CP-hypothesis: main clauses are CPs
▶ illocutionary force marked on C heads (declarative, interrogative, imperative)
 Chapter 8: Wh-questions: An instance of A′ -movement 315

Notes 8.5
1. Examples of various syntactic contexts in which indirect questions occur are given in (i).

(i) a. Complement of verb:

She asked [ whether they are coming ].
b. Complement of adjective:
I’m not sure [ whether they are coming ].
c. Complement of preposition:
The question of [ whether they are coming ] remains unresolved.
d. Subject:
[ Whether they are coming ] remains up in the air.

2. Additional examples of the same are provided in (i).

(i) a. I wolde fayn knowe how that ye understonde thilke wordes and what is youre sentence (cmctmeli.m3,
227.C2.408)
‘I would like to know how you understand these same words and what your judgment is’
b. And forther over, it is necessarie to understonde whennes that synnes spryngen, and how they encreessen
(cmctpars.m3, 296.C1b.355)
‘And moreover, it is necessary to understand where sins come from and how they increase’
c. Now shal ye understonde in what manere that synne wexeth or encreesseth in man. (cmctpars.m3,
297.C2.393)
‘Now you shall understand in what manner sin grows or increases in man.’
d. The fifthe circumstaunce is how manye tymes that he hath synned … and how ofte that he hath falle.
(cmctpars.m3, 323.C1.1502)
‘The fifth circumstance is how many times he has sinned … and how often he has fallen.’

3. Glosses for these Lubukusu examples are adjusted for our present purposes.

4. From our point of view, the term is slightly misleading since subject-aux inversion affects not just the auxiliary verbs
be, do, and have, but also modals. Nevertheless, we will sometimes use the term when it is useful for expository
purposes.

5. Glosses are slightly simplified from the original sources to better serve our current purposes.

6. It’s worth pointing out that not literally every working syntactician believes this is true for every kind of syntactic
operation (one exception is a lot of analyses of Germanic scrambling operations). But the feature-driven mindset is 1)
assumed for most kinds of operations, and 2) predominant in the field as a requirement for the model overall.

7. Glossing in these examples is slightly modified from the original source to fit our current purposes.

8. This definition of focus is definitely a simplification: the diversity and complexity of focus constructions in human
language is marvelous and somewhat stunning, so the attentive reader should be prepared for this to be complexified
upon additional investigation.
 Chapter 8: Wh-questions: An instance of A′ -movement 316

9. The data reported here are from Wasike (2007), Justine Sikuku (personal communication), and Diercks’ field
notes.

Exercises and problems 8.6

Exercise 8.1: Tree-drawing practice with wh-questions
Draw trees of the following wh-questions in English. Draw triangles over all DPs, PPs, and AdvPs,
but annotate all relevant features in the tree (especially on C◦ ).
1. Who will study in the library tonight?
2. What did Khydence find in the park?
3. Where did Khydence find this book?
4. How fast do babies run?
5. Lucca’s incessant talking always annoys Maisha.

Exercise 8.2: Tree-drawing practice with yes/no-questions

Draw trees of the following yes/no-questions in English. Draw triangles over all DPs, PPs, and
AdvPs, but annotate all relevant features in the tree (especially on C◦ ).
1. Will the dog jump over the ditch?
2. Should medical students study hard every day?
3. Will the chef carefully stir the sauce?
4. Could Lucca play his guitar for us tonight?
5. Would the students play games at recess today?

Exercise 8.3: Direct and indirect questions

A. Build structures for both of the direct questions in (9). Treat auxiliary do as a modal. You
can use a triangle for personal pronouns, but build full structures for the wh-phrases.

(1) a. In which house do you live? (pied piping)

b. Which house do you live in? (preposition stranding)

B. In your trees for (A), you have attached the PP as either a complement or an adjunct. Pro-
vide the relevant evidence.
C. Build structures for the complex sentences in (2), which contain indirect questions. From
now on, you can also collapse the wh-phrases using triangle notation.
Chapter 8: Wh-questions: An instance of A′ -movement 317

(2) a. I forget [ in which house you live ]. (pied piping)

b. I forget [ which house you live in ]. (preposition stranding)

Exercise 8.4: Ambiguities in wh-questions

A. The question in the reporter’s telegram in (1a) is structurally ambiguous. Paraphrase the
two interpretations.

(1) a. Reporter’s telegram: How old Cary Grant?

b. Cary Grant’s reply: Old Cary Grant fine.

B. Build a structure for the interpretation of (1a) that the reporter intended. Here and in
(C), treat Cary Grant as a compound noun with a silent determiner, and do not attempt to
implement verb movement to C. (The absence of do support is unexpected. The issue is
addressed in Chapter 12.)
C. Build the structure for the other interpretation—the one that Cary Grant cleverly exploits.

Exercise 8.5: Topicalization structures

A. Using (14a) in the text as a model, build full structures for the topicalized phrases in (1a)–
(1c) (= (48a)–(48c)). Treat as as P, and next and few as Adj. Treat quick as a wink as a
modifier.

(1) a. [AdvP Unbelievably quickly ] the lions will devour the zebra.
b. [AdjP Quick as a wink ], the cat hid under the covers.
c. [PP Over the next few days ], the snow will melt.

B. Using (14b) in the text as a model for when to use triangles, build full structures for the
entire sentences in (1a)–(1c).

Exercise 8.6: Subject-auxiliary inversion in conditionals

English conditional clauses are ordinarily introduced by if, as in (1), but some varieties of English
also allow such clauses to be marked by subject-aux inversion, as in (2).

(1) a. I will call if I have time.

b. If I have time, I will call.
(2) a. I will call should I have time.
b. Should I have time, I will call.
A. Build two structures for (1a)—a full structure for the conditional clause (no triangles) and a
structure for the entire sentence. For simplicity, use triangles for noun phrases and for the
conditional clause in the second structure.
B. Build a structure for the full sentence in (1b). Use triangles for the noun phrases and use a
triangle for the conditional clause itself as well.
Chapter 8: Wh-questions: An instance of A′ -movement 318

C. Repeat (A) and (B) for (2). Propose a suitable C head to accommodate the inversion of the
subject with the modal.

Exercise 8.7: Though-preposing in English

English has two sorts of though clauses: ordinary ones that do not involve movement, as in (1a),
and ones that do, as in (1b). We will refer to the construction in (1b) as the though preposing
construction.

Word of Caution
The term though preposing is potentially confusing. What is preposed is not though
itself, but some constituent of the though clause. In other words, though preposing is XP
preposing that is licensed by though.

(1) a. We will solve the problem, though it seems difficult. (ordinary)

b. We will solve the problem, difficult though it seems. (though preposing)
A. Build two structures for (1a)—the full structure for the though clause (no triangles), and a
structure for the entire sentence. For simplicity, collapse the noun phrases and the though
clause in the second structure. Treat though as a P, as argued in Chapter 6, § 6.3.2.
B. Build the full structure for the subordinate clause in (1b).
C. How do the elementary trees for though needed in (A) and (B) differ?
D. Though preposing is grammatical in (2a), but not in (2b). Explain. You should not need
more than two sentences.

(2) a. ✔ Difficult though the problem seems, …

b. * Difficult though the problem seems very, …

Exercise 8.8: English variation in question formation

A. Based on the data in (1) and (2), how do why questions differ from how come questions in
Mainstream English?

(1) a. ✔ Why are they making such a fuss?

b. * Why they are making such a fuss?
(2) a. * How come are they making such a fuss?
b. ✔ How come they are making such a fuss?

B. Based on the data in (3), how would you characterize the difference between direct ques-
tions in the Philadelphia variety of African American English (AAE) reported here versus
in Mainstream U.S. English (MUSE), as discussed in the chapter?

(3) a. Why you didn’t tell me that?

(overheard at Market and 22nd Street, Philadelphia, PA, 26 September 1998)
Chapter 8: Wh-questions: An instance of A′ -movement 319

b. What you bought tickets for?

(overheard at 30th Street Station, Philadelphia, PA, 26 November 1998)
c. Where you was at?
(overheard at Rittenhouse Square, Philadelphia, PA, 20 July 2001)
d. Where you went?
(overheard at Chestnut and 36th Street, Philadelphia, PA, 13 August 2001)
e. What I told you?
(Willie Perdomo. From where a nickel cost a dime. Real News. April 2002. 28)
f. What you’re doing that for?
(exasperated mother to child, overheard at Primark, Fashion District, Philadel-
phia, PA, 21 January 2023)
g. Well, how much it weighs?
(R S, in conversation, 2 January 2023)
h. When I woked up, I said to myself, “Oh my God, where I’m at?”
(overheard at 21st Street and Fairmount Avenue, Philadelphia, PA, 14 July 2013)
i. Where he’s at?
(overheard on Megabus, Philadelphia to DC, 23 April 2012)
j. Why you didn’t come here? Why you didn’t come here?
(overheard at Market and 12th Street Philadelphia, PA, 6 April 2012)

Problem 8.1: Wh-questions and focus in Guébie

Data provided by Hannah Sande based on work with Sylvain Bodji and Agodio Badiba Olivier.
The data set below is drawn from Guébie, a Kru language spoken in Côte d’Ivoire. Consider the
baseline word order of declaratives in (1), and come to an analysis for the wh-questions in (2) and
focus constructions in (3). Draw elementary trees for the CPs that plausibly occur in (1), (2), and
(3); give a rationale for your analysis.
Glossing: sg = singular; def = definite; Tone is marked with a four-number system where the
tonal marking follows the word. Here 4 represents the highest tone and 1 the lowest. Contour
tones are marked with two tones within a syllable boundary, and syllable boundaries are marked
with periods. Tone will not factor into your analysis here.

(1) a. ɟaci23.1 ji3 su-wa2.2 gbala2.4

Djatchi will tree-def climb
‘Djatchi will climb a tree.’
b. ɔ3 ji3 dʒa31 li3
3sg will coconuts eat
‘They.sg will eat coconuts’

(2) a. ɲɔkpa3.3 touri1.1.3 ji3 lɛtrɪ3.2 kɔpa3.23 na3

who Touri will letter send q
‘To whom will Touri send a letter?’
Chapter 8: Wh-questions: An instance of A′ -movement 320

b. bɛba2.2 touri1.1.3 ji3 ɟaci23.1 kɔpa3.23 na3

what Touri will Djatchi send q
‘What will Touri send to Djatchi?’

(3) a. bagʷɛ3.1 ɔ3 ji3 kɔpɔ3.232

paper hei will send.himk
‘It’s a BOOK they.sg will send him (as opposed to a letter).’
b. touri1.1.3 ɔ3 ji3 bagʷɛ3.1 kɔpa3.23
Touri 3sg will paper send
‘They.sg will send TOURI a book (as opposed to Djatchi).’

Problem 8.2: Sentence-final particles in Mandarin

Consider the following sentences from Mandarin Chinese.

(1) a. Wǒ-men chī yòuzi.

1-pl eat pomelo
‘We eat pomelo.’
b. Nǐ chī yòuzi ma?
2 eat pomelo ma
‘Do you eat pomelo?’
c. Wǒ-men chī yòuzi ba.
1-pl eat pomelo ba
‘Let’s eat pomelo.’
(2) a. Zhāng Yíng jīntiān qù gōngyuán.
Zhang Ying today go park
‘Zhang Ying’s going to the park today.’
b. Zhāng Yíng jīntiān qù gōngyuán ma?
Zhang Ying today go park ma
‘Is Zhang Ying going to the park today?’
c. Wǒ-men jīntiān qù gōngyuán ba.
1-pl today go park ba
‘Let’s go to the park today.’
(3) a. Zhào-lǎoshī gǎi zuòyè.
Zhao-teacher grade homework
‘Professor Zhao grades homework.’
b. Zhào-lǎoshī gǎi zuòyè ma?
Zhao-teacher grade homework ma
‘Does Professor Zhao grade homework?’
c. Wǒ-men gǎi zuòyè ba.
1-pl today grade homework ba
‘Let’s grade some homework.’
A. In a sentence or two each, describe the functions of ma and ba illustrated in the sentences
above.
Chapter 8: Wh-questions: An instance of A′ -movement 321

B. What syntactic position do ma and ba occupy?

C. Draw trees for (1a), (2b), and (3c).

Problem 8.3: Korean clause types

Consider the data that are included here below. And then answer the questions given at the end
of the data set.
A. Based on the data, is Korean a head-final, head-initial, or mixed-headed language? If it is a
mixed-headed language, indicate which heads are initial and which are final.
B. What are the interpretations/functions of (n)ta, -nya, -ca, and -ela/ala?
C. What syntactic position(s) are occupied by (n)ta, -nya, -ca, and -ela/ala?

(1) a. 지혜는 학교에 갔다.

cihyey-nun hakkyo-ey k-ass-ta.
Jihye-top school-to go-pst-?
‘Jihye went to school.’
b. 지혜는 학교에 갔냐?
cihyey-nun hakkyo-ey k-ass-nya?
Jihye-top school-to go-pst-?
‘Did Jihye go to school?’
(2) a. 도서관에 같이 가자.
tosekwan-ey kathi ka-ca.
library-to together go-?
‘Let’s go to the library together.’
b. 도서관에 같이 가라.
tosekwan-ey kathi k-ala.
library-to together go-?
‘Go to the library together!’
(3) a. 비가 온다.
pi-ka o-nta.
rain-nom come-?
‘It’s raining.’ (lit. ‘Rain is coming.’)
b. * 비가 온다았.
pi-ka o-nta-ass.
rain-nom come-?-pst
Intended meaning: ‘It rained.’
c. 비가 오냐?
pi-ka o-nya?
rain-nom come-?
‘Is it raining?’ (lit. ‘Is rain coming?’)
Chapter 8: Wh-questions: An instance of A′ -movement 322

(4) a. 티라미수를 먹자!

thilamiswu-lul mek-ca!
tiramisu-acc eat-?
‘Let’s eat tiramisu!’
b. * 티라미수를 먹었자!
thilamiswu-lul mek-ess-ca!
tiramisu-acc eat-pst-?
Intended meaning: ‘Let’s have eaten tiramisu!’
(5) a. 네 이름을 적어라!
ney irum-ul cek-ela.
your name-acc write.down-?
‘Write down your name!’
b. * 네 이름을 적었어라!
ney irum-ul cek-ess-ela.
your name-acc write.down-pst-?
Intended meaning: ‘Have written down your name!’
(6) 협곡은 아름다웠다.
hyepkok-un alumtaw-ess-ta.
canyon-top beautiful-pst-?
‘The canyon was beautiful.’
(7) a. 이 수업은 어렵냐?
i swuep-un elyep-nya?
this class-top difficult-?
‘Is this class difficult?’
b. 아니, 이 수업은 어렵지 .
ani, i swuep-un elyep-ci anh-ta.
no this class-top difficult-ci neg-?
‘No, this class is not difficult.’
c. * 아니, 수업은 이 어렵지 .
ani, swuep-un i elyep-ci anh-ta.
no class-top this difficult-ci neg-?
Intended: ‘No, this class is not difficult.’
(8) a. 눈이 내리면 눈사람을 만들자.
nwun-i nayli-myen nwun-salam-ul mantul-ca.
snow-nom fall-if snow-person-acc make-?
‘If it snows, let’s make a snowman.’
b. *면 눈이 내린다 눈사람을 만들자.
myen nuwn-i nayli-nta nwun-salam-ul mantul-ca.
if snow-nom fall-decl snow-person-acc make-?
Intended meaning: ‘If it snows, let’s make a snowman.’
Chapter 8: Wh-questions: An instance of A′ -movement 323

c. 눈이 내린 후에 눈사람을 만들자.
nwun-i nayli-n hu-e nwun-salam-ul mantul-ca.
snow-nom fall-pst.comp after-at snow-person-acc make-?
‘After it snows, let’s make a snowman.’
(9) a. 학생이었을 때
haksayng-i-ess-ul ttay
student-be-pst-comp time
‘when I was a student’
b. 학생일 때
haksayng-i-l ttay
student-be-comp time
‘when I am a student’
c. * 학생을이었 때
haksayng-ul-i-ess ttay
student-comp-be-pst time
Intended meaning: ‘when I was a student’

Problem 8.4: Korean politeness

This problem expands directly on Exercise 8.3.
A. Korean has grammaticized formality. The examples above were in the plain style. Consider
the following data in the polite style. Does your analysis from Exercise 8.3 extend to these
data? If not, how could you change it to fit?

(1) a. 학교에 가요.

hakkyo-ey k-a-yo
school-to go-⁇-pol
‘I am going to school.’
or (with appropriate intonation) ‘Are they going to school?’
or ‘Let’s go to school.’
or ‘Go to school!’
b. 학교에 갔어요.
hakkyo-ey k-ass-e-yo
school-to go-pst-⁇-pol
‘I went to school.’
or (with appropriate intonation) ‘Did they go to school?’
not *‘Let’s have gone to school.’
nor *‘Have gone to school!’
Chapter 8: Wh-questions: An instance of A′ -movement 324

Problem 8.5: Tuki A′ -movements

The following data are drawn from Biloa (2013)
Tiki is a Bantu language (Niger-Congo) that is spoken in Cameroon. Consider the data below, and
arrive at an analysis of the Tuki questions and emphasis constructions in (2) and (3), respectively.
Draw trees that are fully annotated with appropriate features (per our current model) for the
sentences in (2b) and (3e).
Glossing: agR = agreement; pst = past tense (there are multiple distinct past tenses, which is not
relevant to this assignment); fut = future. Some glossing is simplified for the purposes of this
assignment.

(1) a. Iyere a-mú-éná vâdzú.

teacher agR-pst1-see children
‘(The) teacher saw the children.’
b. Vâdzú vá-mú-eńá iyere.
children agR-pst1-see teacher
‘(The) children saw a/ the teacher.’
c. Para a-mú-dwǐ okutu.
priest agR-pst1-baptize woman
‘The /a priest baptized the /a woman.’
d. Iyere a-mú-úná imgbémé ná ndzáná.
teacher agR-pst1-kill lion in forest
‘The /a teacher killed a/the lion in the/a forest.’

(2) a. Áné ódzú Putá a-nu-bǎnám?

who foc Puta agR-fut1-marry
‘Who will Puta wed?’
b. Áté aye Putá a-ḿa-námbá?
what foc Puta agR-pst2-cook
‘What did Puta cook?’
c. Ni ówú Putá o-endám n(a) adongo?
when foc Puta agR-goes to village
‘When does Puta go to the village?’
d. Ówáte ówú Putá a-m(á)-iba mǒni?
why foc Puta agR-pst2-steal money
‘Why did Puta steal the money?’

(3) a. Abongo a-má-kóséna agéé wáá yěndze ídzó.

Abongo agR-pst2-buy.for wife his house yesterday
‘Abongo bought his wife a house yesterday.’
b. Abongo ódzú a-má-kóséna agéé wáá yěndze ídzó.
Abongo foc agR-pst2-buy.for wife his house yesterday
‘It is Abongo who bought his wife a house yesterday.’
Chapter 8: Wh-questions: An instance of A′ -movement 325

c. Yěndze aye Abongo a-má-kóséna agéé wáá ídzó.

house foc Abongo agR-pst2-buy.for wife his yesterday
‘It is a house that Abongo bought for his wife yesterday.’
d. Agéé wáá ódzú Abongo a-má-kóséna yěndze ídzó.
wife his foc Abongo agR-pst2-buy.for house yesterday
‘It is his wife that Abongo bought a house yesterday.’
e. Ídzó ówú Abongo a-má-kóséna agéé wáá yěndze.
yesterday foc Abongo agR-pst2-buy.for wife his house
‘It is yesterday that Abongo bought his wife a house.’

Problem 8.6: Yoda’s syntax

In the film series Star Wars and resulting collection of fan fiction and novelizations, Yoda is a wise
character who is a leader of the Jedi, a mythical group of peace-keeping warriors. Yoda’s style
of speech is relatively famous for its idiosyncracy. As a general caveat, a fair amount of Yoda’s
speech is just normal English syntax. But Yoda also has notable divergences from typical English
patterns, which (while atypical) nonetheless are reminiscent of familiar grammatical structures,
which is likely why Yoda does not sound to us like he is speaking complete gibberish. Our interest
is less in why the many various writers of Star Wars decided to have Yoda speak the way he
does, and instead more in why these artistic choices have the emotive and aesthetic effect on us
that they do: Yoda’s grammar is distinctively non-typical for English (and hence interesting) but
it is nonetheless entirely interpretable, meaning that it creatively and judiciously breaks/bends
grammatical structure of English without completely ignoring them.
Give an analysis of Yoda’s syntax based on the examples below, using our grammatical
model of English as we have developed it up until this point. Additional context is provided with
some examples, but only work to analyze the bolded sentences. Choose 2 illustrative examples
to draw trees for.

(1) a. Away put your weapon. I mean you no harm. (The Empire Strikes Back)
b. For eight hundred years have I trained Jedi. My own counsel will I keep on who is
to be trained! (The Empire Strikes Back)
c. This one a long time have I watched. (The Empire Strikes Back)
d. A Jedi craves not these things. (The Empire Strikes Back)
e. If you leave now, help them you could. (The Empire Strikes Back)
f. Remember, a Jedi’s strength flows from the Force. But beware. Anger, fear, aggression.
The dark side are they. (Return of the Jedi)
g. Luke, when gone am I… the last of the Jedi will you be. (Return of the Jedi)
h. Mudhole? Slimy? My home this is. (The Empire Strikes Back)
i. It is finished. No more training you require. (Return of the Jedi)
j. Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny. Consume
you, it will. (The Empire Strikes Back)
k. On many long journeys have I gone. (Yoda: Dark Rendezvous: Star Wars Legends)
Chapter 8: Wh-questions: An instance of A′ -movement 326

l. Death is a natural part of life. Rejoice for those around you who transform into the
Force. Mourn them do not. Miss them do not. Attachment leads to jealousy. The
shadow of greed, that is. (Revenge of the Sith)
m. You think Yoda stops teaching, just because his student does not want to hear? A
teacher Yoda is. Yoda teaches like drunkards drink, like killers kill. (Yoda: Dark
Rendezvous)
n. Clear your mind must be if you are to discover the real villains behind this plot.
(Attack of the Clones)
o. Only the Dark Lord of the Sith knows of our weakness. If informed the senate is,
multiply our adversaries will. (Attack of the Clones)
p. If no mistake you have made, losing you are. A different game you should play.
(Shatterpoint (a Star Wars novel))
q. Soon will I rest, yes, forever sleep. Earned it I have. Twilight is upon me, soon night
must fall. (Return of the Jedi)
r. Named must your fear be before banish it you can. (Dark Lord trilogy)
s. When you look at the dark side, careful you must be. For the dark side looks back.
(Yoda: Dark Rendezvous)
t. When 900 years you reach, look as good you will not. (Return of the Jedi)

Identifying Puzzles 8.1: Wh-questions without movement in Lubukusu

All data from (or adapted from) Wasike (2007)
In this chapter we saw examples from Lubukusu (Bantu, Kenya) where wh-phrases (and
other kinds of focused phrases) move to the left periphery and co-occur with a complementizer.
But this is not the only way to form a wh-question in Lubukusu. Consider the examples be-
low:

(1) a. Wafula a-la-kula siitabu? Lubukusu

Wafula agR-fut-buy book
‘What will Wafula buy?’
b. Wafula a-la-kula siina?
Wafula agR-fut-buy what
‘What will Wafula buy?’
c. Siina ni-syo Wafula a-la-kula?
what comp-agR Wafula agR-fut-buy
‘What will Wafula buy?’

(2) a. Wamalwa a-a-funa luusaala Lubukusu

Wamalwa agR-pst-break stick
‘Wamalwa broke a stick.’
b. Wamalwa a-a-funa siina?
Wamalwa agR-pst-break what
‘What did Wamalwa break?’
Chapter 8: Wh-questions: An instance of A′ -movement 327

c. Siina ni-syo Wamalwa a-a-funa?

what comp-agR Wamalwa agR-pst-break
‘What was it that that Wamalwa broke?’

(3) a. Babaana ba-kha-kule siitabu waaena? Lubukusu

children agR-fut-buy book where
‘Where will children buy the book?’
b. waaena ni-o babaana ba-kha-kule siitabu
16where comp-agR children agR-fut-buy book
‘Where will children buy the book?’

(4) a. Ba-ba-ana ba-kha-kule si-tabu liina? Lubukusu

2-2-child 2sm-fut-buy 7-book 5when
“When will children buy the book?”
b. Liina ni-lwo ba-ba-ana ba-kha-kule si-tabu?
5when comp-5agR 2-2-child 2sm-fut-buy 7-book
“When will children buy the book?”

Lay out the ways in which these kinds of data are a challenge to the model of wh-questions
that we developed in this chapter.
You are not responsible for attempting to solve this: we will tackle patterns like this to-
gether later in the book. It is sufficient to articulate clearly the ways in which these data present
a puzzle to be solved, based on our model as it has been developed to this point.

Identifying Puzzles 8.2: Korean embedded CPs

The data below are instances of embedded clauses in Korean, built on the problem set in Exercise
8.3. These data pose a puzzle for the account as we’ve sketched it so far in this chapter.

(1) a. 태린은 지혜가 학교에 갔냐고 물어봤다.

thaylin-un cihyey-ka hakkyo-ey k-ass-nya-ko mulepw-ass-ta.
Taerin-top Jihye-nom school-to go-pst-?-comp ask-pst-?
‘Taerin asked if Jihye went to school.’
b. 선생님께서 도서관에 같이 가라고 하셨다.
sensayng-nim-kkeyse tosekwan-ey kathi ka-la-ko ha-sy-ess-ta.
teacher-hon-nom.hon library-to together go-?-comp do-hon-pst-?
‘The teacher told us to go to the library together.’
c. 지혜가 티라미수를 먹자고 했다.
cihye-ka thilamiswu-lul mek-ca-ko ha-yss-ta.
Jihye-nom tiramisu-acc eat-?-comp do-pst-?
‘Jihye said we should eat tiramisu (together).’
d. * 유령이 이름을 적었어라고 했다.
yulyeng-i irum-ul cek-ess-ela-ko ha-yss-ta.
ghost-nom name-acc write.down-pst-?-comp do-pst-?
Intended meaning: ‘The ghost told me to have my name written down.’
Chapter 8: Wh-questions: An instance of A′ -movement 328

e. 아이는 협곡이 아름답다고 외쳤다.

ai-tul-un hyepkok-i alumtaw-ess-ta-ko oychy-ess-ta.
child-pl-top canyon-nom beautiful-pst-?-comp shout-pst-?
‘The children shouted that the canyon was beautiful.’
f. * 아이는 협곡이 아름답고다 외쳤다.
ai-tul-un hyepkok-i alumtaw-ess-ko-ta oychy-ess-ta.
child-pl-top canyon-nom beautiful-pst-comp-? shout-pst-?
Intended meaning: ‘The children shouted that the canyon was beautiful.’

Explain why these data are not yet explainable on the model that we have. (An approach
that can account for this will be developed in Chapter 13.)
To be clear, you are not responsible for attempting to solve this: we will tackle patterns like
this together later in the book. It is sufficient to articulate clearly the ways in which these data
present a puzzle to be solved, based on our model as it has been developed to this point.
 9
Feature valuation:
Case and agreement

Chapter outline
9.1 A first look at case . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 330
9.1.1 The basic functions of case . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 330
9.1.2 Inherent case and structural case . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 333
9.2 Case-features . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 335
9.3 Case-feature valuation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 337
9.3.1 The head-to-complement configuration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 338
9.3.2 The head-to-specifier configuration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 341
9.3.3 The head-to-subpart-of-complement configuration . . . . . . . . . . . . . 345
9.4 The Agree operation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 347
9.4.1 Agreement in morphosyntax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 347
9.4.2 Agreement via Agree . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 349
9.4.3 Case via Agree . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 352
9.4.4 Agree and movement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 355
9.5 Different case/agreement alignments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 356
9.6 State of the conceptual architecture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 358
9.7 Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 360
9.8 Exercises and problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 361

This chapter is devoted to Case1 and agreement, two instances of feature valuation in
syntax. Case is a property of noun phrases, marking a noun phrase’s grammatical role within
a sentence. Not every human language expresses this property audibly in terms of morphologi-
cal distinctions. In languages with relatively poor case morphology, like English, this guidepost
function of case is less evident; case arguably carries out its function indirectly by regulating the
surface order of noun phrases (specifically, which links in a noun phrase chain can be expressed
overtly). We discuss the canonical configurations within which case features are assigned. We
show how this is implemented theoretically via the Agree operation, a syntactic operation that al-
lows for features to be shared between elements in the syntax. We show how the Agree operation
accounts for both agreement patterns and case patterns.
Chapter 9: Feature valuation: Case and agreement 330

A first look at case 9.1

9.1.1 The basic functions of case

In order to understand the role of case in human language, it is useful to consider languages in
which constituent order is not as fixed as it is in English. In German, for instance, unlike English,
the subject of an ordinary declarative clause doesn’t need to precede the verb, as shown in (1)
and (2) (the structure of German sentences that allows this flexible word order is interesting but
aside from the current point). The Japanese examples show a similar flexibility in word order be-
tween subjects and objects, though the verb is final in these sentences. In the examples, boldface
indicates the subject, and italics indicates the object.

(1) German:
a. Der Mann sieht den Hund.
the man sees the dog
‘The man sees the dog.’
b. Den Hund sieht der Mann.
the dog sees the man
same as (1a), not the same as (2a)
(2) a. Der Hund sieht den Mann.
the man sees the dog
‘The dog sees the man.’
b. Den Mann sieht der Hund.
the man sees the dog
same as (2a), not the same as (1a)

(3) Japanese:
a. カエルが ハエを 見る。
kaeru-ga hae-o miru.
frog-nom fly-acc sees
‘The frog sees the fly.’
b. ハエを カエルが 見る。
hae-o kaeru-ga miru.
fly-acc frog-nom sees
same as (3a), not the same as (4a)
(4) a. ハエが カエルを 見る。
hae-ga kaeru-o miru.
fly-nom frog-acc eats
‘The fly sees the frog.’
Chapter 9: Feature valuation: Case and agreement 331

b. カエルを ハエが 見る。

kaeru-o hae-ga miru.
frog-acc fly-nom sees
same as (4a), not the same as (3a)

Since German speakers can’t rely on constituent order to identify subjects and objects, how
is it possible for them to keep track of which noun phrase expresses which grammatical relation
(and more generally, which sentence expresses which meaning)? The answer is that grammatical
relations are encoded in German by various morphological case forms. In particular, the subjects
of finite clauses in German appear in a particular form called the nominative case, whereas objects
generally appear in accusative case. (5) gives a morphological analysis of the noun phrases in (1)
and (2). The parallel Japanese distinction between nominative and accusative is illustrated in
(6).

(5) a. d -er Mann, d -er Hund German

the -nom man the -nom dog
b. d -en Mann, d -en Hund
the -acc man the -acc dog
(6) a. カエル が ハエ が Japanese
kaeru -ga, hae -ga
frog -nom fly -nom
b. カエル を ハエ を
kaeru -o, hae -o
frog -acc fly -acc

Notice that in (5), the distinction between nominative and accusative case is marked once in
German: on the head of the noun phrase (the determiner). Japanese likewise marks case a single
time in a noun phrase, but on a morpheme that attaches to the entire DP rather than via inflection
on the determiner.
In some languages, redundant case marking on the determiner and the noun is the norm.
This is illustrated for modern Greek in (7).

(7) Modern Greek:

a. Ο άνδρ-ας βλέπει τ-ο σκύλο.
O andr-as vlepi t-o skil-o.
the.nom man-nom sees the-acc dog-acc
‘The man sees the dog.’
b. Ο σκύλ-ος βλέπει τ-ον άνδρ-α.
O skil-os vlepi t-on andr-a.
the.nom dog-nom sees the-acc man-acc
‘The dog sees the man.’

Finally, case can be marked solely on the noun, as in Latin.

Chapter 9: Feature valuation: Case and agreement 332

Background Info

In the chart below we provide some descriptors of some widely-attested cases that nomi-
nals appear in cross-linguistically, and the parallel constructions in English.2 Keep in mind
that there are many more cases than these, and this list heavily favors cases attested in
Indo-European languages (as a starting point of the discussion).

Case Grammatical function English forms English example

Nominative marks subjects of finite we, I, they We arrived home.

clauses
Accusative marks direct object of us, me, them Our dog greeted us.
transitive verbs
Dative marks indirect objects us/to us, me/to me Our dog gave us kisses.
(ex. recipients, goals)
Genitive marks possessor of ’s, of Maisha’s book; The
another noun pages of the book.

(8) Latin:
a. Fēmin-a can-em videt.
woman-nom dog-acc sees
‘The woman sees the dog.’
b. Can-is fēmin-am videt.
dog-nom woman-acc sees
‘The dog sees the woman.’

But a single case morpheme marking an entire DP is highly typical cross-linguistically. We

illustrate with Japanese here:

(9) Japanese:
a. 元気な 先生が かわいい 猫を 見る。
genkina sensei-ga kawaii neko-o miru.
lively teacher-nom cute cat-acc sees
‘The lively teacher sees the cute cat.’
b. かわいい 猫が 元気な 先生を 見る。
kawaii neko-ga genkina sensei-o miru.
cute cat-nom lively teacher-acc sees
‘The cute cat sees the lively teacher.’

To summarize the discussion in this section: noun phrases can be case-marked in various
ways, including marking on the nominal, marking on determiners or modifiers, and tone-marking
(among other things). But regardless of the particular pattern, case marking has the same basic
purpose: it audibly expresses a noun phrase’s grammatical function in a sentence.
Chapter 9: Feature valuation: Case and agreement 333

9.1.2 Inherent case and structural case

In many languages, a noun phrase’s morphological case depends not only on its function in the
entire sentence, but also on the head that it is most closely associated with. For instance, in
German, the object in a sentence typically appears in the accusative, as we have already seen.
But individual verbs are able to assign their own particular non-accusative case to objects on an
idiosyncratic basis. The typical, systematic/rule-based case we call structural case, determined
by the grammatical structures themselves. We use the term inherent case to refer to lexically-
determined cases in any particular instance. In German verbs sometimes assign inherent case to
objects, which is typically dative,3 depending on the verb. Some examples are shown in (10) and
(11).

(10) German:
a. ✔ { d-en Hund, d-ie Frau } unterstützen (accusative)
the-acc dog the-acc woman support
‘to support the { dog, woman }’
b. * { d-em Hund, d-er Frau } unterstützen (dative)
the-dat dog the-dat woman support
(11) German:
a. * { d-en Hund, d-ie Frau } helfen (accusative)
the-acc dog the-acc woman help
‘to support the { dog, woman }’
b. ✔ { d-em Hund, d-er Frau } helfen (dative)
the-dat dog the-dat woman help

Verbs typically determine the case of the object, but this case is not always the stan-
dard/default case. So in the examples above, unterstützen ‘support’ assigns the typical accusative
to its object, whereas helfen ‘help’ assigns the dative. So structural case is determined solely
by the syntactic structures: it is predictable based on structure (a transitive sentence produces
a nominative and an accusative argument in German, for example). But inherent case is deter-
mined more idiosyncratically by particular lexical items: in the examples above, helfen ‘help’
assigns dative case where we might otherwise expect accusative case.
Inherent case in Latin is illustrated in (12). As in German, each particular verb determines
the case of its object, but in Latin, the choice of case ranges over three cases—dative, accusative,
and ablative.

(12) Latin:
a. { fēmin -ae, *fēmin -am, *fēmin -ā } { sub- venīre, suc- currere } (dative)
woman -dat -acc -abl under- come under- run
‘to help the woman’
b. { fēmin -am, *fēmin -ae, *fēmin -ā } ad- iuvāre (accusative)
woman -acc -dat -abl to- support
‘to support the woman’
Chapter 9: Feature valuation: Case and agreement 334

c. { fēmin -ā, *fēmin -ae, *fēmin -am } fruī (ablative)

woman -abl -dat -acc enjoy
‘to enjoy the company of the woman’
Japanese likewise has inherent case alongside structural cases. Accusative case in (13a)
is the structural case for objects, but some verbs assign dative case to their objects (13b), and
others assign comitative case (13c) (meaning something happened with someone/something
else).
(13) Japanese:
a. 同級生 { を *に *と } 気遣う (accusative)
dōkyūsei { -o, *-ni, *-to } kizukau
classmate -acc -dat -com worry.over
‘to worry over a classmate’
b. 同級生 { *を に *と } 惚れる (dative)
dōkyūsei { *-o, -ni, *-to } horeru
classmate -acc -dat -com fall.for
‘to fall in love with a classmate’
c. 同級生 { *を *に と } 付き合う (comitative)
dōkyūsei { *-o, *-ni, -to } tsukiau
classmate -acc -dat -com date
‘to date a classmate’
In German and Latin, prepositions resemble verbs in determining the case of their comple-
ment. In German, prepositions assign accusative, dative, or (sometimes) the genitive; in Latin,
they assign ablative or accusative.
(14) a. German:
durch d-ie Tür, bei d-er Kirche, während d-es Krieges
through the-acc door, by the-dat church, during the-gen war
‘through the door, by/near the church, during the war’
b. Latin:
dē sapienti-ā, ad rīp-am
about wisdom-abl, to shore-acc
‘about wisdom, to the shore’
Japanese doesn’t show this same pattern of case-marking inside PPs, but the patterns from
German and Latin above are quite broadly attested crosslinguistically. The example from Tamil
(Dravidian; India, Sri Lanka) in (15) shows how different postpositions (in Tamil P heads come
after their complements) assign dative, accusative, and even nominative case.
(15) Spoken Tamil (Schiffman 1999, 37, 38, 43):
ேகாயிலுக்கு பக்கத்துெல ஏழு மணி வெரக்கும் என ் ென தவிர
kooyil-ukku pakkattle, eer̤u maṇi-∅ varekkum, en-ne tavira
temple-dat near, seven o’clock-nom until, 1sg-acc besides
‘near the temple, until 7:00, besides me’
Chapter 9: Feature valuation: Case and agreement 335

Finally, in German, Latin, and Tamil certain adpositions (a blanket term for pre- and post-
postions) can assign more than one case. For the German and Latin, the accusative marks di-
rection, and the other case (dative in German, ablative in Latin) marks location. In the Tamil
example in (18), the same postposition can select a noun phrase in the dative or oblique cases,
yielding slightly different interpretations.

(16) German:
a. in { d-ie, *d-er } Bibliothek schicken
in the-acc the-dat library send
‘to send into the library’
b. in { d-er, *d-ie } Bibliothek arbeiten
in the-dat the-acc library work
‘to work in the library’
(17) Latin:
a. in { bibliothēc -am, *bibliothēc -ā } mittere
in library -acc -abl send
‘to send into the library’
b. in { bibliothēc -ā, *bibliothēc -am } labōrāre
in library -abl -acc work
‘to work in the library’
(18) Spoken Tamil (Schiffman 1999, 39, 41) :
a. மரத்து ேமெல
marattu-∅ meele
tree-obl atop
‘on top of the tree (in contact with the tree)’
b. மரத்துக்கு ேமெல
marattu-kku meele
tree-dat atop
‘above the tree (no contact with the tree)’

Case-features 9.2
The next two sections introduce some general concepts and conditions that enable us to derive
the distribution of case forms in English (which we focus on) and other languages. We begin by
introducing the notion of a Case-feature.
Consider the contrast between (19) and (20):

(19) a. ✔ They will help her.

b. ✔ She will help them.
Chapter 9: Feature valuation: Case and agreement 336

(20) a. * Them will help she.

Intended meaning: (19a)
b. * Her will help they.
Intended meaning: (19b)

Why are the sentences in (20) ungrammatical? The answer is that noun phrases in English
are subject to the requirements in (21).

(21) a. Subject pronouns of finite clauses appear in the nominative.

b. Object pronouns appear in the objective.

As is evident, both of the subjects in (20) are objective (accusative) forms, and both of
the objects are nominative forms. Each of the sentences in (20) therefore maximally violates
the requirements in (21). Clearly this is only a restriction on pronouns specifically (in English)
because full lexical DPs show no morphological distinctions based on grammatical function. So
the DPs the teacher and the children in (22) show no morphological distinctions whether they are
subjects or objects.

(22) a. The children will celebrate the teacher.

b. The teacher will celebrate the children.

Now compare the examples in (19) and (20) with those in (23).

(23) a. You will help her.

b. She will help you.

In Mainstream U.S. English, the pronouns they and she exhibit distinct forms for the nom-
inative and objective, whereas you doesn’t (we say that you is a syncretic form, in that one form
realizes multiple different case functions). But because case syncretism between the nominative
and the objective is not complete in English (in other words, because at least some pronouns still
have distinct forms for the two cases), we will treat you as a nominative form in (23a), equiv-
alent to they and she, but as an objective form in (23b), equivalent to them and her. Moreover,
we will treat the noun phrase my big brother as a nominative form in (24a) and as an objective
(accusative) form in (24b) for exactly the same reason.

(24) a. My big brother will help her.

b. She will help my big brother.

In order to disambiguate instances of case syncretism like you and my big brother, it is useful
to associate noun phrases with Case-features. Each Case-feature has a value that is selected from
among all of the various morphological case forms in that language (regardless of whether the
case forms are expressed synthetically or analytically). In English, for instance, a Case-feature can
assume one of three values: nominative, objective (accusative), possessive (genitive). In Russian,
a Case-feature has a choice among six values (nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, locative,
instrumental).
Chapter 9: Feature valuation: Case and agreement 337

(25) Russian Case: (Timberlake 2004)

душа duša, ‘soul’

Nominative Genitive Dative Accusative Locative Instrumental
душа́ души́ душе́ ду́шу душо́й душе́
dušá duší dušé dúšu dušój dušé

If we need to explicitly represent a noun phrase’s Case-feature, we can do so by means of

labels as in (26) and (27).

(26) a. [DP-nom They ] will help [DP-obj her ].

b. [DP-nom You ] will help [DP-obj her ].
c. [DP-nom My big brother ] will help [DP-obj her ].
(27) a. [DP-nom She ] will help [DP-obj them ].
b. [DP-nom She ] will help [DP-obj you ].
c. [DP-nom She ] will help [DP-obj my big brother ].

This is a useful perspective because English clearly does care about Case distinctions, but it is
only realized morphologically on pronouns, and even then only on specific pronouns. This leads
to a conclusion that Case is present syntactically, but is only sometimes realized morphologi-
cally.
You may also have noticed that we have begun to use a nuanced annotation: We refer to
the abstract properties of Case (the proposed Case features being valued in the syntax) with cap-
italized “Case”, what is sometimes called abstract Case; we refer to the morphological forms of
nominals with lower-case “case”, sometimes called morphological case. This distinction some-
times matters a lot in advanced analyses of syntactic patterns, though for the most part we won’t
dwell on it in this text. But when you see capitalization differences, it is because we refer to the
abstract features as “Case”, but the overt morphological forms as “case.”

Case-feature valuation 9.3

In § 9.1.1, we said that the purpose of Case is to encode a noun phrase’s grammatical function
in the sentence. In order to implement this insight in structural terms, we will require each
noun phrase to be associated with a syntactic head that assigns a value for a Case-feature to
that noun phrase.4 In English, Case assigners are either verbs or prepositions (with very few
exceptions), but there are languages (usually ones with rich overt case morphology) where the
set of Case-assigning heads includes adjectives and nouns. The formalism that we will use for
assigning values to features assumes that the assigner enters the syntax prespecified, with the
Chapter 9: Feature valuation: Case and agreement 338

feature possessing a value, and the DP enters the syntax with an unvalued feature, which we
denote with a blank (underlined) space.

(28) Feature formalism

a. I◦ : [Case: nom]
b. DP: [Case: ]

What (28) denotes is that the head I possesses a Case-feature that is lexically-specified with
a value. Since finite I◦ in most languages is assumed to be the assigner of nominative Case (as we
will see below), we assume it is lexically specified with a valued Case-feature. On the other hand,
we don’t want DPs to be lexically specified with a value for their Case-feature, since which Case
they have varies based on what role the DP plays in the sentence. Instead, we assume they have
a Case-feature that lacks an inherent value, but will be valued (that is, be “assigned a value”) in
the course of deriving a syntactic structure.
This fits nicely with the idea of different heads assigning different Cases. It also immedi-
ately raises the question (at least for a syntactician!) of whether the paths that Case-features take
on their journey from head to noun phrase are constrained in any way: how does a DP’s Case-
feature get a value? There are in fact precise structural configurations by which features are
valued: traditionally syntacticians have identified three licit paths, or Case assignment con-
figurations: the head-to-complement configuration, the spec-head configuration, and the
head-to-subpart-of-complement configuration. Recall from Chapter 5 that ‘Spec’ (read as
‘speck’) refers to the specifier node in the X′ schema of phrase structure. The configurations are
illustrated in Table 9.1; nodes that are irrelevant for Case assignment are omitted.
The remainder of the section discusses concrete examples. At the end of this section in
§ 9.4.2, we will introduce a feature valuation operation (called Agree) which is the main modern
approach to feature valuation. Agree offers one operation that can account for all of the feature
valuation configurations noted in (9.1) (and more!).

9.3.1 The head-to-complement configuration

The first Case assignment configuration is the simplest in the sense that it contains the fewest
number of nodes. In English, it is used in connection with the assignment of objective case by P◦
or V◦ , as in (29). The first two examples are simple. The third shows a more complex structure
with two heads, each of which assign Case to its DP complement.

(29) a. expecting us
b. with them
c. expecting a storm with high winds

Example (30) gives the associated structures, with the endpoints of the path highlighted.
(The higher DP positions in (30a), (30c) are irrelevant here.)
Chapter 9: Feature valuation: Case and agreement 339

Configurations for valuation of Case-features (first approximation, to be adjusted)

Tree Name(s) Locality Relation
XP

X′
head-to-complement local DP and X◦ are siblings
◦
X DP
head
noun phrase

XP

DP X′
head-to-specifier, local DP is the specifier of X◦
spec-head
noun phrase X◦
head

XP

X′

X◦ YP
head-to-subpart-of- nonlocal X◦ c-commands DP
head complement
DP Y′

noun phrase

Table 9.1: Summary of Case assignment configurations.

Chapter 9: Feature valuation: Case and agreement 340

(30) a. VP b. PP

DP V′ P′

V◦ DP P◦ DP
expecting with
us them
c. VP

DP V′

V◦ DP
expecting
D′

D◦ NP
a
N′

N′ PP

N◦ P′
storm
P◦ DP
with
high winds

In each of these instances we can assume that the licensing head (V◦ and P◦ , respectively)
bears a valued Case-feature [Case: obj]. The DPs enter the derivation with an unvalued Case-
feature [DP: ], which is then valued with objective Case in this configuration.
Chapter 9: Feature valuation: Case and agreement 341

9.3.2 The head-to-specifier configuration

As we have just seen, heads can assign Case to their complements. Given the X′ schema, we might
expect heads also assign Case to their other argument position in the spec-head configuration.
Indeed, since subjects of sentences start out life as specifiers of verbs, this seems at first blush
like an attractive way to assign Case to sentential subjects. According to this idea, what assigns
nominative Case to they (or more precisely, to its trace in Spec,VP) in sentences like (31) is the
finite verb laughed in (31a) and its nonfinite counterpart laugh in (31b).

Word of Caution
In what follows, it is important to distinguish carefully between finite clauses and finite
verbs. See the appendix to Chapter 2 (§ 2.9: Appendix: Finiteness in English) for detailed
discussion.

(31) a. ✔ They laughed. (finite clause, finite verb)

b. ✔ They will laugh. (finite clause, nonfinite verb)

Although we will end up rejecting this approach, let us play it out for the moment in order
to show why it is unsatisfactory. Example (32) shows the structures just described.

(32) a. IP b. IP

DPi I′ DPi I′

they I◦ VP they I◦ VP
[pst] will
ti V′ ti V′

V◦ V◦
laughed laugh

Finite clause, finite verb Finite clause, nonfinite verb

(to be revised!) (to be revised!)

Now if verbs were able to assign nominative Case regardless of their finiteness, nonfinite
laugh should be able to do so to they when it is the subject of non-finite clauses, for example in
either small clauses or infinitives.

(33) a. * We made [ they laugh ]. (small clause)

Intended meaning: We made them laugh.
Chapter 9: Feature valuation: Case and agreement 342

b. * We expected [ they to laugh ]. (to clause)

Intended meaning: We expected them to laugh.

The structures for these sentences are illustrated in (34). (In (34b), the lower subject moves
on from Spec(VP) to Spec(IP), but that can’t be the reason for the ungrammaticality, because that
movement is grammatical in (32).) In each of these instances (modeling ungrammatical sentences)
the embedded subject cannot appear in a nominative form.

(34) a. * IP

DPi I′

we I◦ VP
[pst]
ti V′

V◦ VP
made
DP V′

they V◦
laugh
Chapter 9: Feature valuation: Case and agreement 343

b. * IP

DPi I′

we I◦ VP
[pst]
ti V′

V◦ IP
expected
DPk I′

they I◦ VP
to
tk V′

V◦
laugh

But these structures are impossible (and hence the sentences ungrammatical), a fact impos-
sible to attribute to semantic anomaly, since the intended meaning can be expressed grammat-
ically by simply replacing the nominative by the objective, as in (33). We must therefore reject
the idea that it is V◦ that assigns nominative Case. However, we don’t have to give up the idea
that nominative Case is assigned in the spec-head configuration. All we need to do is revise our
idea about which head it is that assigns Case, and have finite I◦ be the Case-assigner. This then
gives (35), which supersedes (32).
Chapter 9: Feature valuation: Case and agreement 344

(35) a. IP b. IP

DPi I′ DPi I′

they I◦ VP they I◦ VP
[pst] will
ti V′ ti V′

V◦ V◦
laughed laugh

Finite clause, finite verb Finite clause, nonfinite verb

(revised, final) (revised, final)

The contrast between (31) and (33) now follows straightforwardly since I◦ is finite in (31), but
missing or nonfinite in (33).5
Nominative Case is not the only Case in English to be assigned in the spec-head configu-
ration; possessive Case is another. Here, the Case-assigning head is the possessive determiner
(’s or its silent plural variant). Three examples, along with their structures, are given in (36)
and (37). For the possessive pronoun, we assume that the specifier and the head combine in the
morphology as the synthetic form their.

(36) a. the county’s revenues

b. the counties’ revenues
c. their revenues

(37) a. b. c. DP
DP DP
DP D′
DP D′ DP D′
their D◦ NP
the county D ◦
NP the counties D ◦
NP [poss]
[poss] [poss] N′
’s N′ ’ N′
N◦
N ◦
N ◦ revenues
revenues revenues
Chapter 9: Feature valuation: Case and agreement 345

Extra Info
In possessive constructions, there are two DPs: an embedded one (the possessor) and the
main one (the entire noun phrase containing both the possessor and the thing possessed).
(37) highlights Case assignment to the possessor DP. The containing DP gets Case from
some other head.

9.3.3 The head-to-subpart-of-complement configuration

The final Case assignment configuration is where a head values a phrase that is a subpart of
its complement; we will consider a particularly common instance in which the valued phrase
is in the specifier of the complement of the relevant head. This example is more unusual than
the first two in two respects. First, as already mentioned in connection with (9.1), it is the only
configuration in which a maximal projection intervenes between the Case-assigning head and
the noun phrase. Second, in English, it allows V to assign objective Case to a directly following
noun phrase in sentences like (38).

(38) They expected [ us to leave ].

Sentences of this type were at one time called Exceptional Case-Marking (ECM) sen-
tences, because the subject of the embedded (non-finite) clause gets objective Case from the main
clause verb. Over time, opinions have gone back and forth over exactly how exceptional “Excep-
tional Case-Marking” is. At first glance, it seems like we could avoid having to postulate this
third configuration by giving (38) the main-clause VP structure in (39a) rather than that in (39b).
We treat to as a nonfinite counterpart of would (compare the paraphrase in (40)).

(39) a. VP b. VP

»DP« V′ »DP« V′

V◦ DP IP V◦ IP
expected expected
us I′ DPk I′
I◦ VP
to us I◦ VP
V ′ to
tk V′
◦
V
leave V◦
leave

Not like this Like this

Chapter 9: Feature valuation: Case and agreement 346

But there are several reasons to reject (39a). First, (38) has roughly the same meaning as
(40).

(40) They expected that we would leave.

In both sentences, what is expected is a proposition (a state of affairs). This proposition is ex-
pressed as a single IP in (40), as indicated by the underlining, so that there is a direct correspon-
dence between semantic and syntactic constituenthood. This parallel is preserved in (39b), but
not in (39a).
A second, related, argument for rejecting (39a) comes from sentences containing expletive
there. Recall from Chapter 4, § 4.5.1 that expletive there is licensed as the subject of a clause
containing a verb of (coming into) existence. If we treat the DP following expect in ECM sentences
as a subject, as we do in (39b), then (41a) is expected to be grammatical on a par with (41b).

(41) a. They expect there to be a recession.

b. They expect that there will be a recession.

By contrast, treating that same DP as a complement of the matrix verb, as in (39a), would require
complicating the licensing condition on expletive there. And of course, even if we were successful
in revising the licensing condition, we would still forfeit the simple representation of the parallel
between (38) and (40) just discussed. An additional conceptual argument is that the structure in
(39a) violates the X′ schema and hence the binary branching hypothesis.
The term “ECM” is often restricted to sentences like (38), where the complement of the Case-
assigning head is a nonfinite IP. In a slightly wider sense, the term can be used in connection with
small clauses like (80a) from Chapter 4, repeated here as (42) and given the structure in (43).

(42) God let [ there be light ].

(43) IP

DPi I′

God I◦ VP
[pst]
ti V′

V◦ VP
let

DP V′

there V◦ DP
be
light
Chapter 9: Feature valuation: Case and agreement 347

The Agree operation 9.4

9.4.1 Agreement in morphosyntax

Case is far from the only instance of feature valuation in syntax. It is quite common in the
morphosyntax of the world’s languages for a head to be valued for features on another phrase.
Perhaps the most common instance of this is subject agreement on verbs, where a verb is inflected
to match features of the subject of the sentence.

(44) English subject agreement

a. The dogs run-∅ fast.
b. The dog run-s fast.

English is relatively impoverished in its agreement properties; many languages have much
richer inflection, both in terms of agreement appearing on more heads in the syntax, and in more
instances, but also in terms of agreement displaying more features. In Swahili verbal elements
have a subject marker (SM) that shows agreement with the subject of the sentence. Multiple
verbs can have a subject marker and the subject marker agrees in noun class with the subject. In
the examples below Wekesa (a personal name) is a class 1 noun, and ng’ombe ‘cow’ is a class 9
noun.

(45) Swahili subject agreement

a. Wekesa a-li-kuwa a-me-enda nyumba-ni.
1Wekesa 1sm-pst-be 1sm-pfv-go house-loc
‘Wekesa had gone home.’
b. Ng’ombe i-li-kuwa i-me-rudi shamba-ni.
9cow 9sm-pst-be 9sm-pfv-return field-loc
The cow had returned to the field.

The most common features of nominals to be included in inflectional constructions like

these are gender (noun class), number, and person (see Chapter 2 for an introduction to these).
Syntacticians refer to these collectively in a bundle as 𝜑-features (sometimes written phi-features;
this is the Greek letter 𝜑, which we pronounce as “fie”, rhyming with lie).
Agreement in 𝜑-features occurs on a wide variety of grammatical categories (cross-
linguistically speaking). Many languages have concord within DPs where adnominal modifiers
like adjectives, numerals, prepositions, and more inflect to match the 𝜑-features of the head noun.
We illustrate this widespread pattern with Swahili here.
Chapter 9: Feature valuation: Case and agreement 348

(46) Swahili adjectives agree with head nouns (Wilson 1970)

a. m-tu m-zuri b. wa-tu wa-zuri
1-person 1-nice/good 2-person 2-nice/good
‘a nice person’ ‘nice people’
c. m-ti m-dogo d. mi-ti mi-dogo
3-tree 3-small 4-tree 4-small
‘a small tree’ ‘small trees’
(47) Swahili prepositions agree with head nouns (Carstens 2001; Wilson 1970)

a. ki-tabu ch-a mw-alimu b. rafiki y-a mw-alimu

7-book 7-of 1-teacher 9friend 9-of 1-teacher
‘the/a teacher’s book’ ‘the/a teacher’s friend’

Likewise, numerals in Swahili agree with their head nouns (reminder, the Arabic numerals
in glosses are glosses for noun classes here).

(48) Swahili numerals agree with head nouns (Wilson 1970)

a. wa-tu wa-wili b. mi-ti mi-wili c. vi-azi vi-wili

2-people 2-two 4-trees 4-two 8-potatoes 8-two
‘two people’ ‘two trees’ ‘two potatoes’

Likewise, other elements in clausal syntax can bear agreement. For example, in some lan-
guages complementizers can agree with subjects. In Kinande (spoken in the Democratic Republic
of Congo) the complementizer agrees with the matrix subject, whereas in West Flemish (spoken
in Belgium) the complementizer agrees with the embedded subject.
Chapter 9: Feature valuation: Case and agreement 349

(49) Kinande complementizer agreement6 (Baker 2008)

a. Mo-ba-nyi-bwire ba-ti Kambale mo-a-gul-ire eritunda.
aff-2agR-me-tell 2agR-that 1Kambale aff-1agR-buy fruit
‘They told me that Kambale bought fruit.’
b. Mo-n-a-layirire Kambale in-di a-gule amatunda.
aff-1sgagR-pst-convince 1Kambale 1sg.agR–that 1agR-should.buy fruits
‘I convinced Kambale that he should buy fruits.’

(50) West Flemish complementizer agreement (van Koppen 2017; Haegeman 2000)
a. K peinzen da-∅ / da-n dienen student nen buot gekocht eet.
I think that-3sg / that-3pl that student a boat bought has
‘I think that that student has bought a boat.’
b. K peinzen da-n / *da-∅ die studenten nen buot gekocht een
I think that-that-3pl / that-3sg those students a boat bought have
‘I think that those students have bought a boat.’

In Gweno (spoken in Tanzania), the negation morpheme at the end of a sentence agrees with the
subject of the sentence.

(51) Gweno Negation Agreement (Dunlap 2024)

a. Ku-a-ghenda ufuva pfo
2sg.sm-pRes-go market neg.2sg
‘You don’t go to the market.’
b. Thi-tha-ghenda ufuva nyi
1sg.neg.sm-pRes.neg-go market neg.1sg
‘I don’t go to the market’

We could go on endlessly on this point: the variety of agreement patterns in the world’s
languages is both astonishing and fascinating. The takeaway lesson here is that there is clearly a
need in our theory for a mechanism to value features on some element based on the features of a
separate element. In the model we are building we will use the Agree operation; we describe how
this is used to capture agreement in 𝜑-features § 9.4.2, and then below in § 9.4.3 we discuss how
the Agree operation can also be used to explain valuation of Case-features, and its relationship
to DP licensing.

9.4.2 Agreement via Agree

Inflection based on 𝜑-features is implemented syntactically using the Agree operation. So a Probe
bearing some (valued) 𝜑-features searches its c-command domain for a Goal that bears unvalued
𝜑-features. Upon finding the closest such Goal, the Goal’s 𝜑-features are valued. Agree is fun-
damentally an operation where a valued feature on one projection gives a value to an unvalued
feature on another projection.
Chapter 9: Feature valuation: Case and agreement 350

(52) Agree
• A Probe is specified with a feature (F) is lacking a specified value, which it will seek
a value for.
• A Probe searches its c-command domain for a matching feature F that contains a
value.
• The closest instance of Feature F (the Goal7 ) values the unvalued feature F on a
Probe.

As a reminder, a head A c-commands another head B if B is the sibling of A, or contained within

(that is, dominated by) the sibling of A. We schematize this as in (53), where unvalued features
are annotated with empty underlining and features (as we’ve done throughout) are annotated
inside square brackets. We tend to use arrows to illustrate the probing operation, but as with
movement arrows, these are for visual convenience and are not an obligatory part of the formal-
ism. We use dotted arrows to represent probing operations to visually distinguish probing from
movement.

(53) Probe-Goal relationship:

XP

X′

X◦ YP
[F: ]
Y′

Y◦ DP[F: val]

We can look at a very simple example of the Agree operation at work in the example we
started with in (44b). The initial position of the subject is presented in (54b) (following VPISH),
and from that position the 𝜑-Probe on I◦ searches its c-command domain for a DP with 𝜑-features.
It finds the DP the dog, which is third person singular.
Chapter 9: Feature valuation: Case and agreement 351

(54) a. The dog run-s fast.

b. IP

I′

I◦ VP
[pRes]
[𝜑: ] DP[𝜑: 3Rd,sg] V′

the dog V′ AdvP

V◦ fast
run

The result of this Agree operation is shown in (55). The previously-unvalued 𝜑-features on I◦
are now valued with the features of the DP, and the DP has moved to Spec,IP (as is normal for
English).

(55) IP

DP[𝜑: 3Rd,sg ] I′

the dog I◦ VP
[pRes]
[𝜑: 3Rd,sg] DP V′

the dog V′ AdvP

V◦ fast
run

We don’t draw or explain it here (see Chapter 12 for more details) but the tense and agreement
features on I◦ appear morphologically on the main verb in English.
In contemporary research, the Agree operation is the standard mechanism to use to explain
dependencies between two elements in the syntax. This includes the 𝜑-features that we normally
think of as “agreement” (or, conjugation), but also includes many other features within syntax.
A prime example are Case-features, which we take up in the next section.
Chapter 9: Feature valuation: Case and agreement 352

9.4.3 Case via Agree

The configurations we note above describe accurately major structural configurations that struc-
tural Case relations occur in, but as a theory or model of structural Case they are decidedly
lacking—why should there be three different configurations for the same underlying operation?
Example (56) repeats these configurations from above, slightly summarized, for reference.

(56) Case-assignment configurations, to be revised:

a. b. c.
XP XP XP

X′ DP X′ X′

X◦ DP noun phrase X◦ YP
◦
X
head head
head
noun phrase DP Y′

noun phrase
head-to-complement head-to-specifier head-to-subpart-of-complement
local, X◦ and DP siblings local, DP is Spec,XP nonlocal, X◦ c-commands DP

In fact, if we assume that the same Agree operation that accomplishes 𝜑-agreement values
Case-features, we can accommodate all three of these configurations. A head valuing its com-
plement, or a phrase within its complement, straightforwardly follows from Agree: both of these
phrases are c-commanded by the head. But how can a head value a phrase in its specifier? In fact,
we just walked though an example of this in (55) above: as long as the spec-head relationship is
the result of movement, we can assume that Agree also values Case via Agree, and the result of
the Agree relation is the agreed-with phrase raising to the specifier of the head with the Probe,
as in (55).
Case and 𝜑-agreement show a key difference, however: the unvalued 𝜑-features that are
the Probe in an Agree relation are in the structurally higher position in an example like (54b). But
if we add Case-features to the mix, as in (57), we can see that here the unvalued Case-features
are c-commanded by the valued Case-features, instead of the other way around.
Chapter 9: Feature valuation: Case and agreement 353

(57) IP

I′

I◦ VP
[pRes]
[Case: nom] DP V′
[𝜑: 3Rd,sg ]
[𝜑: ]
[Case: ]
V′ AdvP
the dog
V◦ fast
run

The typical assumption here is that Case-features and agreement features are essentially
two sides of the same coin: Case is the realization of the Agree relation on the DP, and agree-
ment is the realization of the Agree relation on the initiating head. So we assume that once an
Agree relation has been established between a head and a phrase, all unvalued features shared
between the two can be valued. So when the 𝜑-Probe in (57) established an Agree relation with
DP and values its 𝜑-features, the unvalued Case-feature on the DP can also receive a value from
the nominative feature on I◦ . So the result of the Agree relation in (57) is the configuration in
(58).

(58) IP

DP I′
[𝜑: 3Rd,sg ]
[Case: nom ]
I◦ VP
[pRes]
the dog
[Case: nom] DP V′
[𝜑: 3Rd,sg ]
the dog V′ AdvP

V◦ fast
run

What about accusative Case on objects? For now we can assume that there is also a 𝜑-
Probe on V◦ along with a valued Case-feature, so an Agree relation between V and some DP in its
c-command domain results in valuation of Case on the object DP. The example in (59) assumes a
third person singular object is Case-valued.
Chapter 9: Feature valuation: Case and agreement 354

(59) Accusative Case valuation (first approximation, to be revised in Chapter 13)

VP

DP V′

subject V◦ DP
[𝜑: 3Rd,sg ]
[𝜑: 3Rd,sg]
[Case: acc ]
[Case: acc ]
object

English doesn’t have agreement on verbs with objects, but it is in fact a common process across
languages. (60) illustrates an example from Swahili, with the class 1 object agreement marker
(glossed as 1ombelow) circled, which agrees with the class 1 object mama.
(60) Swahili object agreement
Wa-toto a-li- mw- ona mama.
2-children 2sm-pst-1om-see 1mama
‘The children saw (their) mom.’
Therefore, we will assume the English (and all languages) share this agreement operation, which is
sometimes evident in the case form of objects and sometimes marked via an agreement morpheme
on the verb. We will modify the analysis of accusative Case licensing a bit in Chapter 13, but the
core mechanics won’t change.
This requirement for Case assignment to objects has traditionally been called the Case
Filter, but we’ll refer to it as the DP Licensing Requirement.
(61) DP Licensing Requirement:
All DP arguments must receive a Case value.
Especially for structural Cases, where DPs receive Case from some head in the syntax, DP li-
censing has become a central way in which syntacticians analyze and explain the distribution of
DPs in sentences. That is to say, part of what explains why DP subjects or DP objects appear
in the positions that they do in a particular construction in a particular language is how those
DPs receive Case in those constructions. We can formalize this in the following way: all DP ar-
guments can be assumed to enter the structure with an unvalued Case-feature ([Case: ]). The
DP Licensing Requirement is essentially already encoded in the mechanics of Agree (unvalued
features requiring a value), with the assumption that if a Case-feature fails to receive a value in
the course of building a sentence, the sentence is ungrammatical. We will see how this plays out
in various ways in what follows.8
You may be starting to find the tree-drawing overwhelming: there are so many features
on each node of the tree! But we don’t draw all of these features every time we draw a tree
(because exactly that: it would quickly become overwhelming). In general, we only discuss the
features and Agree operations that are relevant for whatever puzzle/construction is under dis-
cussion.
Chapter 9: Feature valuation: Case and agreement 355

9.4.4 Agree and movement

The astute reader may be wondering: if Case is valued via Agree, why does, for example, finite
I◦ in English appear to license its subject in its specifier, not in its c-command domain? What
we assume in these instances is that some Probes require movement of the Goal after Agree has
occurred (and, in fact, this happens with many Probes). Miyagawa (2010) calls this Probe-Goal
Union, which is a fitting term for our purposes.

(62) Probe-Goal Union: A valued Goal moves to the specifier of the head bearing a Probe.

So when does a Goal undergo Probe-Goal Union, and when does it not? It doesn’t appear
that there is a large insight to be had here; some Goals move to their Probes, and others don’t, and
it appears to be fairly idiosyncratic when which occurs. The grammar of any particular language
(or construction within a language) is consistent, but there doesn’t appear to be a deep insight to
be had about UG: some Agree relations in human languages are linked with movement, others
are not. So children learning a language will simply have to learn that movement happens in
some instances. This is fine—lots of aspects of language are learned and are not a part of UG. But
we do want UG to contain mechanisms to encode those facts about language. Here we annotate
a Probe as surrounded by large bullets if it also triggers movement (a formulation borrowed from
Müller 2010).

(63) Probe that triggers Probe-Goal Union:

∙ [𝜑: ]∙

This requirement of a phrase to move to a specifier position is often termed an EPP require-
ment, or an EPP quality. EPP used to stand for something that is now no longer in our theory9 but
can be thought of now as a requirement for an Extra Peripheral Position (as suggested by David
Pesetsky). To our knowledge, EPP qualities encoded in syntax don’t link with deep insights about
UG, but rather are language-specific components of mental grammar that are learned by children.
The existence of EPP qualities is much too common to be a coincidence, however, suggesting that
UG must contain a way for children to encode this in their mental grammars. Similarly, the pre-
cise features included in a Probe seem to be matters of language-specific learning, but the nature
of Probes in general (i.e., the Agree operation) appears to be a consistent component of UG.
There may also be times where a position seems to require that a phrase appear there
independently of whether the phrase participated in an Agree relation, a sort of generalized EPP
requirement. Syntacticians tend to posit [epp] features on heads to encode these circumstances;
these are instances that simply require some XP to be moved or added to a specifier position.
Arguably, English Spec,IP is one of these generalized EPP circumstances. Expletive subjects
suggest this to us: there are instances where the subject that triggers agreement does not move
to Spec,IP.

(64) a. There are children running in the park.

b. There is a child running in the park.

These sentences require the expletive subject there to be grammatical, but agreement is
controlled by the low subject (and the low subject is Case-licensed as well). The requirement
Chapter 9: Feature valuation: Case and agreement 356

that an overt subject to occur in that position, even if it is an expletive, suggests that we need to
place an [epp] feature on I◦. Many such requirements can in fact be reduced to PGU requirements
on Probes, however, and this is generally the preferred route, since all an [epp] feature does is
annotate that something must occur in a position, it doesn’t offer a deep or explanatory account
of why that is so.

Different case/agreement alignments 9.5

A short comment is in order about kinds of morphological ase patterns that are distinct from the
sorts that are described in the languages above. The patterns described in this section constitute
an empirical puzzle in need of explanation based on the model that we’ve built thus far, but are
included here to ensure your exposure to something closer to the true range of case-marking
patterns in human languages. The nominative-accusative case alignment is a common pattern
cross-linguistically, but it is not the only common pattern. In some languages, case forms ap-
pear to track much more closely to thematic roles rather than tracking grammatical functions.
In Georgian, for example, agentive subjects are marked with the case form -m(a), in both transi-
tive sentences like (65a) and intransitive sentences like (65d). In contrast, theme arguments are
marked with the distinct case form -i, whether that theme is an object as in the transitive in (65a),
or a subject as in the unaccusative intransitive in (65b). We simply gloss these forms as agent
and theme here for the moment for the sake of clarity.

(65) Georgian case-marking (Butt 2006, 157)1

a. Nino-m Ceril-i daCera. Georgian
Nino-agent letter-theme wrote
‘Nino wrote a letter.’
b. Kar-i gaiγo.
door-theme opened
‘The door opened.’
c. * Kar-ma gaiγo.
door-agent opened
‘The door opened.’
d. Nino-m imγera.
Nino-agent sang
‘Nino sang.’

Beyond that, there are many languages that have a case alignment that (like nominative-
accusative) is not strictly linked with thematic role, but which nonetheless does not align with
notions of ‘subject’ and ‘object’ that are familiar from European languages like German, Greek,
1. Glosses in these examples are adjusted and simplified for expositional purposes.
Chapter 9: Feature valuation: Case and agreement 357

and Latin, or from East Asian languages like Korean and Japanese. In nominative-accusative
languages, accusative is essentially a special case that is assigned in transitive constructions to
the object: both transitive and intransitive sentences assign nominative to their subjects. The
ergative-absolutive case alignment assigns a special case in transitive sentences, but it is assigned
to the agentive subject (this is called ergative case). Transitive objects and intransitive subjects are
both assigned the same case (called absolutive case). In Tongan (Austronesian, Tonga) absolutive
case is marked with the ʻa morpheme on the intransitive subject in (66a) and the transitive object
in (66b); Tongan marks ergative case (ʻe) on transitive subjects as shown in (66b).

(66) Tongan case-marking (Otsuka 2005)

a. Naʻe tangi ʻa Sione.
pst cry abs Sione
‘Sione cried.’
b. Naʻe maʻu ʻe Sione ʻa e ika.
pst get eRg Sione abs the fish
‘Sione got the fish.’

We see similar patterns emerge in agreement as well. The Mayan language Chol (Mexico)
does not inflect nominals with case, but its agreement forms on verbs follow a ergative/absolutive
pattern (in some tenses/aspects).10 In these examples in (67) the suffixed agreement forms are
absolutive, agreeing either with the transitive object in (67a) or the intransitive subject in (67b).
The prefixed agreement is reserved for transitive subjects, as in (67a).

(67) Chol ergative-absolutive agreement (Coon 2013, 55)

a. Tyi a-k’el-e-yoñ.
pfv 2eRg-watch-tv-1abs
‘You watched me.’
b. Tyi ts’äm-i-yoñ.
pfv bathe-itv-1abs
‘I bathed.’

This is just the tip of the iceberg with respect to the complexity of morphological case and agree-
ment patterns cross-linguistically. Nominative-accusative and ergative-absolutive alignments are
the predominant patterns, but there are fine-grained variations of these in a vary array of lan-
guages (not to mention distinctions in inherent case patterns, agreement on grammatical cate-
gories other than verbs, and other kinds of variety that are found).
Accounting for these kinds of case and agreement alignment require some minor modi-
fications of the case valuation system that we sketched as part of our model here. And as is
the case with language grammars, poking into the details of any individual language’s grammar
reveals a range of interesting nuances and sub-patterns. So the simple sketch of Agree offered
in this chapter doesn’t (on its own) explain every pattern of case and agreement in the world’s
languages. This small subsection is simply intended to open the door a small crack to show you
that there is much more complexity to be evaluated. But even in analyses of these other kinds of
patterns, you find the same Agree operation employed as a mechanism for feature valuation, just
with differences employed in the implementation (e.g., which features make up Probes, where
Chapter 9: Feature valuation: Case and agreement 358

Probes are located, etc). The core theory that we sketched here remains a part of the UG toolkit
for grammatical analysis.

State of the conceptual architecture 9.6

A model that includes feature valuation in the syntax also places some requirements on the overall
conceptual architecture of the model. Specifically, we can’t assume that all morphological forms
are established from the start of syntax; rather, what form a verb takes, or a noun phrase takes,
depends on the features it acquires over the course of building a sentence (e.g., case or agreement
via Agree, inflection of verb forms via tense, etc). So at least some morphological forms are de-
cided upon (and inserted into a sentence) after that sentence is already built. This is referred to
as Late Insertion of forms. The model that assumes Late Insertion is called Distributed Mor-
phology (DM), which is the predominant view of the morphology-syntax interface. Within DM,
some morphological forms are lexical, joining the X′ schema at the beginning of the derivation
of a sentence. For example, lexical items like cat and car will always be realized as cat and car.
But others are inserted based on how a derivation proceeds. So a verb like run will be realized
as run in some syntactic contexts (ex., a future tense I◦ ), but will take another morphological
form in other syntactic contexts (e.g., ran under a past tense I◦ ). In this way, morphology is “dis-
tributed”: some of it seems to be lexical, whereas some other forms are dependent on the results
of syntax.
We see a model emerging that is often referred to as the ‘T-model’ or the ‘Y model’ be-
cause of its visual correspondence to a T or Y (excluding the morphology portion we have added
here).11

(68)
lexicon X′ schema

morphological syntactic structures

forms

PF LF

Phonological Form (PF) is where pronunciation is sorted out. Morphological forms are inserted
Chapter 9: Feature valuation: Case and agreement 359

here, but a lot of phonology depends on the morphological forms of elements, so Late Insertion
must precede other aspects of phonology. Logical Form (LF) is roughly semantics, that is, the
interface with concepts and meaning.
This conceptual architecture provides organizing principles for our theorizing. As estab-
lished here, syntax is built from lexical items, and therefore the properties of lexical items can
affect syntax. But phonology (PF) follows syntax, so the properties of phonology are not expected
to affect syntax. This does appear to be true: we see no rules in the world’s languages like “move
a DP to Spec,IP if it begins with a /p/”. Likewise, PF and LF are built from the output of syntax,
but are not directly dependent on each other. This tracks with the dissociation of pronunciation
and meaning (languages don’t share particular sounds with particular meanings, except due to
historical connection or contact between the languages). This discussion of the model is by no
means exhaustive, but it’s sufficient for our current purposes.

New Empirical Observations

▶ morphological case-marking of nominals

• nominative-accusative alignment
• ergative-absolutive alignment
▶ inherent vs. structural case
▶ agreement/inflection in 𝜑-features

Components of the Theoretical Model

▶ Agree operation
▶ valued and unvalued features
▶ Case and agreement features
▶ morphological case vs. abstract Case features
▶ 𝜑-features (phi-features)
▶ DP licensing
▶ Late Insertion of morphological forms
 Chapter 9: Feature valuation: Case and agreement 360

Notes 9.7
1. We will eventually in this chapter follow the standard convention in the field by capitalizing “Case” where it refers to
an abstract syntactic feature and leaving it lowercase where it refers to a morphological realization of these features;
in the leadup to that conclusion, we simply use lowercase “case.”

2. This chart was originally inspired and based on a similar chart on Wikipedia but has been very heavily edited.

3. A very few German verbs assign a third case, the genitive. These are felt to be archaic by present-day speakers, so
we ignore them here.

4. In addition to Case assignment, which holds between a head in a sentence and a noun phrase, there is also the
phenomenon of case concord, where constituents within a noun phrase all share the same Case. If case concord
exists in English, it is invisible, but we know it exists in other languages from examples like (7). The mechanisms for
Case assignment that we discuss here don’t (directly) account for case concord: for now, we will simply assume that
Case is assigned to an entire DP and subconstituents receive Case by virtue of being a part of the a Case-licensed
DP.
◦
5. The higher finite I in the clauses in (34) can’t assign Case to the lower subject, since the relationship between the
two is nothing like the requisite spec-head configuration. Instead, it assigns nominative to the higher subject (its
“own” subject, as it were).

6. Glosses for the Kinande data are simplified for expositional purposes.

7. Be careful not to confuse this with the thematic role goal!

8. There are various caveats here that will become evident to the student continuing on in syntax, but which go beyond
what an introductory text requires.

9. Within Government and Binding Theory, EPP stood for Extended Projection Principle: see Haegeman (1994) for a
textbook discussion of Government and Binding Theory.

10. In fact, Chol is like many languages in showing split ergativity, displaying ergative-absolutive patterns in some
instances but not in others. A full discussion of ergative-absolutive case and agreement goes far beyond what we
can tackle in this textbook, but an interested reader can read about these patterns in Coon (2013).

11. It is also sometimes referred to as an inverted T-model or inverted Y-model.

Chapter 9: Feature valuation: Case and agreement 361

Exercises and problems 9.8

Exercise 9.1: Practice with Case assignment
Explain how each of the DPs in the sentences below are assigned Case, per the model built in this
chapter. Give a tree for each sentence.

(1) a. Three children chased their dog in the park.

b. The puppy slept for eight hours.
c. The students will be reading all week.
d. The rains came early this year.
e. My brother is cooking dinner.

(2) a. There are three children chasing their dog in the park
b. It is raining.
c. I want the children to be quiet.

Exercise 9.2: Practice with agreement

For each of the examples in (1), explain (using Agree formalism) the derivation of the agreement
forms on the auxiliary verbs. For the purposes of this assignment, assume that the auxiliary verbs
arise on I◦ .

(1) a. The children are leaving.

b. The boy is running very fast.
c. There are three raccoons fighting in the yard.
Chapter 9: Feature valuation: Case and agreement 362

Exercise 9.3: Case assignment in infinitives

A. Table 9.2 summarizes the Case assignment facts for English discussed in the chapter. A few
values remain to be filled in based on the evidence in (1).

Head Case Configuration

Adj n/a
D, possessive poss spec-head
I, finite nom spec-head
I, nonfinite (to)
N n/a
P obj head-comp
V obj head-comp, head-spec

Table 9.2: Incomplete summary of case assignment

(1) a. * { Us, we, our } to leave now would not be helpful.

b. For { ✔ us, *we, *our } to leave now would not be helpful.

B. Why is there no entry (not even a “n/a” entry) for ordinary (= nonpossessive) D?

Exercise 9.4: Subjects of non-finite clauses

According to the analysis in the text, why are the sentences in (1) ungrammatical? You don’t
need to be concerned with the structure of the entire sentence; just treat the underlined part as
an IP headed by nonfinite I.

(1) a. * They claim to they understand Hegel.

b. * They claim they to understand Hegel.
Chapter 9: Feature valuation: Case and agreement 363

Exercise 9.5: Exceptional Case-marking

How is the thematic relation between leave and its argument us represented in (1b)? How about
in (1a)? (Note: these trees were given earlier in (39).)

(1) a. VP b.
VP
»DP« V ′

»DP« V′
V◦ DP IP
expected V◦ IP
us I′ expected

DPk I′
I◦ VP
to
V′ us I◦ VP
to
V◦ tk V′
leave
V◦
leave

Exercise 9.6: More practice with Case assignment

A. Build structures for the sentences in (1). You can use triangle notation for all DPs. As-
sume that for can take IP complements. Assume further that for clauses can be subjects of
sentences; in other words, PPs can substitute in Spec(VP) and move to Spec(IP).

(1) a. That should be them now.

b. They waited for us.
c. We waited for there to be a sale.
d. For daycare to be available for the children would be convenient.
e. For daycare to be available would be convenient for the parents.
f. I suspect the class to be difficult.

B. How do each of the DPs in (1) get Case? Which Case is assigned by what head in what
configuration? Group similar patterns together.
Chapter 9: Feature valuation: Case and agreement 364

Exercise 9.7: Null subjects and agreement

In many languages it is possible to leave a DP subject out of a sentence, potentially producing a
sentence that consists of nothing other than a verb. We illustrate from Tuki (Bantu, Cameroon)
in (1), but there is a vast number of unrelated languages across the world that have similar pat-
terns.
The interpretation of null subjects tends to be of a pronominal subject, that is, a discourse-
familiar referent that is referred to but not explicitly mentioned. In this chapter we assumed
that agreement morphemes arise from unvalued features on a head (I◦ for subject agreement on
verbs) that receive a value via Agree in the course of building the structure of a sentence. For this
exercise, assume the Agree formalism is consistent for all subject agreement forms on verbs.
A. What is the subject of the sentences in (1b) and (1d)?
B. Draw a tree that specifies the agreement operation for (1b).

(1) Tuki null subjects (Biloa 2013, 61)

a. Mbárá a-bangáḿ.
Mbara agR-cries
‘Mbara cries’
b. A-bangáḿ.
agR-cries
‘They.sg cry.’ or ‘He/she cries.’
c. Vádzu vá-bangáḿ.
children agR-cry
‘Children cry.’
d. Vá-bangáḿ.
agR-cry
‘They.pl cry.’

Exercise 9.8: Non-Case-assigning heads

In the chapter, we stated that nouns and adjectives aren’t Case-assigners in English. Provide
evidence for that statement. One piece of evidence for each category is sufficient.

Exercise 9.9: Agreement and Case in Lubukusu

Data here are adapted from Wasike (2007). Glosses are adjusted for our current purposes.
Instructions: 𝜑-feature agreement is often talked about as the flip side of Case assignment—shown
on verb heads instead of DPs. Here, consider a variety of inflectional properties of Lubukusu
(wh-agreement especially). Question: Is 𝜑-feature agreement necessarily linked with Case as-
signment? Explain why or why not.
Background: Background: Lubukusu is a Bantu language of the Luyia subgroup that is spoken in
Kenya. Lubukusu has a robust noun class system: noun classes are glossed with cardinal numbers
(1, 2, 3, 4, etc). You don’t have to explain anything about noun classes, though they do show what
is agreeing with that, which is sometimes helpful to know. agR = agreement morphemes, agR
Chapter 9: Feature valuation: Case and agreement 365

glosses are accompanied with a noun class gloss based on what the noun class is of the subject that
they agree in; pst = past tense; pRs = present tense; pfv = perfective aspect (translated similar to
past tense); all verbs in Tiriki necessarily end in a vowel—sometimes this vowel is part of another
affix, at other times we simply gloss it as fv (final vowel).

(1) a. Nafula a-kha-singa chii-ngubo kalaa.

1Nafula 1agR-pRs-wash 10-clothes slowly
‘Nafula is washing clothes slowly.’
b. Baba-ana ba-kha-singa chii-ngubo kalaa.
2-children 2agR-pRs-wash 10-clothes slowly
‘The children are washing the clothes slowly.
c. Nangila a-a-tekhela Wekesa kama-kaanda.
1Nangila 1agR-pst-cook.for 1Wekesa 6-beans
‘Nangila cooked beans for Wekesa.’
d. Baba-ana ba-a-tekhela Wekesa kama-kaanda.
2-children 2agR-pst-cook.for 1Wekesa 6-beans
‘Nangila cooked beans for Wekesa.’

(2) a. Wekesa ni-ye baba-aana ba-a-tekhela kama-kaanda.

1Wekesa comp-1agR 2-children 2agR-pst-cook.for 6-beans
‘It was Wekesa that the children cooked beans for.’
b. Kama-kaanda ni-k-o Nangila a-a-tekh-el-a Wekesa.
6-beans comp-6agR 1Nangila 1agR-pst-cook-appl-fv 1Wekesa
‘It was beans that Nangila cooked for Wekesa.’

(3) a. Nafula a-kha-singa chii-ngubo a-rieena?

1Nafula 1agR-pRs-wash 10-clothes 1agR-how
‘How is Nafula washing clothes?’
b. Baba-ana ba-kha-singa chii-ngubo ba-rieena?
2-children 2agR-pRs-wash 10-clothes 2agR-how
‘How are the children washing clothes?’

(4) a. Wafula a-a-loma a-li Nekesa a-a-rema kumu-saala.

1Wafula 1agR-pst-say 1agR-comp 1Nekesa 1agR-pst-cut 3-tree
‘Wafula said that Nekesa cut the tree.’
b. Baba-ana ba-a-loma ba-li Nekesa a-a-rema kumu-saala.
2-children 2agR-pst-say comp-2agR 1Nekesa 1-pst-cut 3-tree
‘The children said that Nekesa cut the tree.’
Chapter 9: Feature valuation: Case and agreement 366

Exercise 9.10: Case assignment inside subconstituents

This exercise extends Exercise 6.9.
A. If you have not already done so for Exercise 6.9, build structures for the underlined DPs in
(1). Here, you can use triangle notation for both constituent DPs (Kim and incompetents).

(1) a. We dislike Kim’s impulsive hiring of incompetents.

b. We dislike Kim impulsively hiring incompetents.

B. How do the DPs contained within the underlined phrase get Case? Which Case is assigned
by what head in what configuration?

Exercise 9.11: Gerunds

This exercise extends Exercise 9.3, A.
English has a silent nonfinite gerund head ([geR]) with the elementary tree in (1).

(1) IP

»DP« I′

I◦ »VP«
[geR]

The VP complement of this head must be headed by a verb form in -ing.

(2) { ✔Them, *they, *their } being late, we cancelled the meeting.

Task: Based on the evidence in (2), determine this head’s Case assignment properties.
Chapter 9: Feature valuation: Case and agreement 367

Problem 9.1: Complements of expect

A. The verb assigns Case to us in the head-spec configuration in both (1a) (= (39b)) and (1b), but
(1b) is completely ungrammatical. Why is that? The intended meaning of (1b) is expected
our departure.

(1) a. ✔ VP

»DP« V′

V◦ IP
expected

DPk I′

us I◦ VP
to
tk V′

V◦
leave
b. * VP

»DP« V′

V◦ DP
expected

DPi D′

us D◦ NP
the
ti N′

N◦
departure

B. In (2), V assigns objective Case to the lower DP us in the head-spec configuration, as indi-
cated by the boxes, and the possessive head assigns possessive Case to the higher DP, as
indicated by the circles. Recall that possessive Case is invisible on full DPs. Again, the in-
tended interpretation is expected our departure. But again, as in (1b), the result is completely
ungrammatical. What has gone wrong?
Chapter 9: Feature valuation: Case and agreement 368

(2) * VP

»DP« V′

V◦ DP
expected

DPi D′

us
D◦ NP
[poss]
ti N′

N◦
departure

Problem 9.2: Archaic English PPs

This exercise extends Exercise 9.3, A.
English has (now very archaic) PPs of the type in (1). Assume that there is a DP, just like
expletive there (even though the there at issue here is referential).

(1) thereafter (= after that), therefrom (= from that), therewith (=with that)

What would you suggest as the elementary tree shared by all of the relevant prepositions,
and in what configuration do they assign Case to there?
Note: There are several solutions.

Problem 9.3: Welsh subject positions

These data are drawn from Roberts (2005), Awbery (1976), Sproat (1985), and Borsley, Tallerman, and
Willis (2007).
Welsh is a Celtic language that is spoken in Wales (a part of the United Kingdom). Recall
these basic Welsh examples from Problem 7.1 in Chapter 7. Here we are considering what the
Case assignment properties of Welsh must be.

(1) Diflanodd y dyn.

disappeared the man
‘The man disappeared.’
(2) Gwelodd y dyn y ci.
saw the man the dog
‘The man saw the dog.’
Chapter 9: Feature valuation: Case and agreement 369

(3) Gwêl y dyn y ci.

sees the man the dog
‘The man sees the dog.’
(4) Gwelai y dyn y ci.
was.seeing the man the dog
‘The man was seeing the dog.’
(5) Gall Ifor ddarllen llyfrau.
can Ifor reading books
‘Ifor can read books.’
(6) Dylai Gwyn ddisgrifio’r llun.
ought Gwyn describe the picture
‘Gwyn ought to describe the picture.’
(7) Prynodd Elin dorth o fara.
buy.pst.3S Elin loaf of bread
‘Elin bought a loaf of bread.’
(8) Gwnaeth Elin brynu torth o fara.
do.pst.3S Elin buy loaf of bread
‘Elin bought a loaf of bread.’
(9) Ddaru Elin brynu torth o fara.
pst Elin buy loaf of bread
‘Elin bought a loaf of bread.’
(10) Ddaru Megan fynd adre.
pst Megan go home
‘Megan went home.’

Tasks:
▶ Explain what structural configuration nominative Case must be assigned in for Welsh.
▶ Draw a tree of (5).

Identifying Puzzles 9.1: More on Welsh nominative Case

This puzzle expands on Problem 9.3. After solving that, now consider these additional examples
that contain auxiliaries and aspect morphemes. Assume that aspect morphemes are introduced
on their own functional heads, similar to English auxiliaries.

(1) Mae’r dyn yn gweld y ci.

is.the man in (asp) seeing the dog
‘The man sees the dog.’
(2) Mae’r dyn wedi gweld y ci.
is.the man after (asp) seeing the dog
‘The man sees the dog.’
Chapter 9: Feature valuation: Case and agreement 370

(3) Bydd y dyn yn gweld y ci.

will.be the man in (asp) seeing the dog
‘The man will see the dog.’
(4) Mae ef ar weld y ddrama.
is he on (asp) seeing the play
‘He is about to see the play.’
(5) Mae Elin wedi prynu torth o fara.
be.pRes.3sg Elin pfv buy.inf loaf of bread
‘Elin has bought/is buying a loaf of bread.’
(6) Mae Elin yn prynu torth o fara.
be.pRes.3sg Elin pRog buy.inf loaf of bread
‘Elin has bought/is buying a loaf of bread.’
(7) Mae Rhiannon yn cysgu rwan.
be.pRes.3sg Rhiannon pRog sleep.inf now
‘Rhiannon is sleeping now.’
(8) Mae Rhiannon wedi mynd adre.
be.pRes.3sg Rhiannon PERF go.INF home
‘Rhiannon has gone home.’
(9) Ddaru Megan ddim mynd adre.
pst Megan neg go.inf home
‘Megan didn’t go home.’

Answer these questions

1. What challenge do these examples pose to the analysis of Welsh nominative Case from
Problem 9.3?
2. Give as precise a statement as you can about what position/positions Welsh subjects are
licensed in.
3. Discuss the ways this does (or does not) fit naturally with the model developed in this
chapter.

Identifying Puzzles 9.2: Assigning Case, edge cases

The underlined noun phrases do not fit our Case assignment configurations discussed
above:

(1) a. We discussed the proposal the very next week.

b. We kept their books five years.
c. We don’t read the Times every single day

There are two ways to think about these noun phrases: either they are not assigned Case, or they
are assigned Case in some way that is non-obvious. Build a hypothesis for both options.
Chapter 9: Feature valuation: Case and agreement 371

1. Assuming they are not assigned Case, why are these noun phrases exceptionally not re-
quired to be assigned Case? What is different about these vs. the ones we discussed in the
chapter?
2. Assuming that they ARE assigned Case: can you think of a way of assigning Case to the
underlined phrases in (1) without introducing a new Case assignment configuration?

Identifying Puzzles 9.3: Case-assigning determiners

In English, there are no Case-assigning determiners without a specifier. Is such a determiner
possible in principle?

Identifying Puzzles 9.4: Is Case in a one-to-one relationship with DPs?

In the examples discussed in the text, there is always a one-to-one correspondence between Case-
assigning heads and noun phrases. What would happen if we relaxed this condition?
A. In particular, give an example of a linguistic expression that would be grammatical if we
allowed a single head (say, V) to assign Case to two noun phrases in the configurations that
we have discussed?
B. Conversely, give an example of a linguistic expression that would be grammatical if we
allowed a single noun phrase (or more precisely, a single chain) to get Case from more
than one head?
This is speculative, of course-I–the intention is to work out what the logical possibilities
are for languages based on our model as we have developed it here.

Identifying Puzzles 9.5: Multiple subjects in Japanese

Explain why the constructions below are a puzzle for our model as it has been developed thus
far.
Note: Topic marking alternations have been suppressed from these data for simplicity, but be
aware students who are native speakers of Japanese may find some of these sentences pragmat-
ically odd without context.

(1) a. 象が 鼻が 長い。
zou-ga hana-ga nagai.
elephant-nom nose-nom long
‘Elephants have long noses.’ (lit. ‘Elephants’ noses are long.’)
b. タンポポが 成長が 速い。
tanpopo-ga seichō-ga hayai.
dandelion-nom growth-nom fast
‘Dandelions grow quickly.’ (lit. ‘Dandelions’ growth is fast.’)
c. 山本先生が 息子が 足が 痛い。
Yamamoto-sensei-ga musuko-ga ashi-ga itai.
Yamamoto-teacher-nom son-nom foot-nom painful
‘Professor Yamamoto’s son’s foot hurts.’
A-movement of 10
subjects: Passives and
more

Chapter outline
10.1 A-movement of subjects in transitives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 373
10.2 Characteristics of the passive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 375
10.3 A movement analysis of the passive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 377
10.3.1 Passive of simple sentences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 377
10.3.2 Passive of ECM sentences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 380
10.3.3 Evidence for A-movement in passives: selectional restrictions . . . . . . . 383
10.4 Distinguishing active and passive sentences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 383
10.5 Unaccusatives: Inherently passive predicates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 385
10.6 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 388
10.7 Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 389
10.8 Exercises and problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 390

In this chapter we discuss passivization, which involves movement of a non-subject to

become a subject: we discuss the movement as an instance of movement to an argument position
(or A-position), also known as A-movement. This is a pattern of movement that we have already
encountered but which we have not been specific about before now. There are a number of ways
that this movement is non-identical to the A′ -movements (movement to non-argument positions)
and head-movements we have discussed up until now. A-movement includes movement of a
subject from Spec,VP to Spec,IP, but also includes movements from other positions to Spec,IP.
This chapter is just an initial introduction: Chapter 11 discusses another significant construction
centered on an A-movement that further demonstrates these properties. This chapter is fairly
short, focusing on the existence of A-movements and some fundamentals about the properties
of passives. Chapter 13 is where we fulfill the promises of this chapter and give a full formal
treatment of passives.
Chapter 10: A-movement of subjects: Passives and more 373

A-movement of subjects in transitives 10.1

At this point we have seen various instances of movement: for example, we have seen wh-
movement of wh-phrases to Spec,CP. We referred to this as movement to a non-argument po-
sition (an A′ -position), which is also known as A′ -movement. Wh-movement was one instance
of A′ -movement, but it also includes movements like focus movement and topicalization. We
have also seen movement of heads, specifically I◦ -to-C◦ in questions as well. But even before
that we had concluded that the initial positions of subjects is in Spec,VP, even though (in many
instances) they move to Spec,IP.

(1) IP

DPk I′

my family I◦ VP

tk V′

V◦ DP
loves
cats

We have become comfortable with these patterns, but there are relevant aspects of these patterns
that perhaps seem so obvious that they easily escape attention. Consider the examples of wh-
questions in (2), where it is possible to move either a wh-subject or a wh-object to Spec,CP.

(2) a. Who will instruct the children?

b. Who will the teachers instruct ?

Wh-movement, and A′ -movement more generally, is comfortable moving relatively long-

distance. So in (2b) the wh-object moves over the subject to Spec,CP. But this is not true of all
kinds of syntactic movements. Consider the baseline sentence in (3a), which has the underlying
partial structure in (3b).

(3) a. The teachers will instruct the children.

b. [IP will [VP the teachers instruct the children ] ]

Based on (3b), we expect movement to Spec,IP. But this movement is distinctly different
than the wh-movement to Spec,CP. Whereas wh-movement allows an object to hop over a subject,
the parallel instance of an object hopping over a subject to fill Spec,IP is ungrammatical.

(4) a. *The children will the teachers instruct.

b. [IP The children will [VP the teachers instruct ]] .
Chapter 10: A-movement of subjects: Passives and more 374

(5) A-movement (movement to an argument position)

DP movement to a Case-licensing head (that is, an argument position).

As we will see, only DP arguments can participate in this movement; non-arguments are typically
incompatible with this kind of movement.1
Wh-movement to Spec,CP is an instance of what we called A′ -movement (A-bar move-
ment), what we can think of as non-argument movement, since A′ -movement is not restricted
to argument DPs the way that A-movement is and A′ -movement is not movement to a Case-
licensing position.

(6) a. The children will leave tomorrow.

b. When will the children leave ?
(7) a. The children are playing in the park.
b. Where are the children playing ?

So we can see that it’s possible to A′ -move adjunct wh-phrases to Spec,CP without trou-
ble. Attempting to A-move these adjunct phrases to the canonical subject position in Spec,IP
is uniformly unacceptable. The examples in (8) are failed attempts to A-move adjunct phrases
to Spec,IP. (Examples (8b) and (8c) entertain different potential positions of the subject when it
doesn’t move to Spec,IP, but both are ungrammatical.)

(8) a. * Tomorrow will the children leave.

b. * All day will the children play.
c. * All day will the children play.

These different locality profiles suggest different motivations for A-movement than for A′ -
movement. Whereas A-movement appears to share a connection with Case-licensing (and is
more local), A′ -movement generally seems linked to some kind of discourse property (ex., wh-
questions, emphasis via focus or topic), and has a less strict locality profile.

(9) A′ -movement (movement to a non-argument position)

Movement of arguments or adjuncts to a non-Case-licensing head. This movement is
typically to Spec,CP and generally occurs for some discourse purpose.

Neither this definition of A′ -movement (movement to non-argument positions) in (9) nor

the definition of A-movement (movement to argument positions) in (9) capture every instance
of A-movement and A′ -movement cross-linguistically, but they are good enough for our current
purposes. We get more precise about the distinctions between these different movement profiles
(A vs. A′ ) when we discuss Binding Theory in Chapter 15.
The point of this discussion is that even though we see XPs of various sorts moving in dif-
ferent kinds of constructions, these movements are not all identical, and show different profiles
(i.e., they show different collections of properties). This chapter discusses some major instances
of A-movement in addition to the VPISH-induced movement discussed in this section; we intro-
duce A-movement of derived subjects in passives in § 10.2–§ 10.3 and we discuss A-movement
Chapter 10: A-movement of subjects: Passives and more 375

in unaccusative predicates in § 10.5. Chapter 11 discusses Raising constructions, another major

instance of A-movement (i.e. movement to an argument position).

Characteristics of the passive 10.2

Passive constructions are a consistent instance of A-movement cross-linguistically. In English, as
in many other languages, active sentences like (10a) have passive counterparts like (10b).

Background Info

In the remainder of this section, grammatical functions are indicated above the boxed el-
ement and thematic roles are indicated below. The following abbreviations are used:
sbj—subject, obj—(direct) object, a—agent, thm—theme

sbj obj
(10) a. We approved them .
a thm
sbj pp
b. They were approved (by us) .
thm a
Passivization has a number of effects. First and foremost, the agent argument, which is
expressed as the subject of the active sentence, appears in the passive as an optional by-phrase.
Second, the now vacant subject position is taken over by the theme argument. In other words, the
agent and theme arguments are linked to different grammatical relations in the passive than
in the active. If we think of subject as outranking object on a hierarchical scale of grammatical
relations (as is often assumed), then the passive demotes the agent argument and promotes the
theme argument. Third, passive past participles, unlike their homonymous active counterparts,
can’t assign objective Case.

(11) a. ✔ We approved them. (active)

b. * Itexpl was approved them (by us). (passive)
Intended meaning: ‘They were approved (by us).’

In English, the passive is expressed analytically by a combination of the past participle and
auxiliary be. Other languages allow the passive to be expressed synthetically, as illustrated in
(12) for Korean, in (13) for Latin, and in (14) for Swahili.

(12) Korean
a. Active:
Chapter 10: A-movement of subjects: Passives and more 376

sbj obj
철수가 계획을 허락하였다.
Chelswu-ka kyehoyk-ul helak-ha-yessta.
Chelswu-nom plans-acc approve-act-pst
a thm

‘Chelswu approved the plans.’

b. Passive:
sbj pp
계획이 (철수에 의하여) 허락되었다.
Kyehoyk-i Chelswu-eyuyhaye helak-toy-yessta.
plans-nom Chelswu-by approve-pass-pst
thm a

‘The plans were approved (by Chelswu).’

(13) Latin
a. Active:
sbj obj
Puer-ī port-am claud-unt.
boy-nom.pl.m door-acc.sg.f close-3pl.pRs
a thm

‘The boys are closing the door.’

b. Passive:
sbj pp
Port-a (a puer-īs) claud-it-ur.
door-nom.sg.f by boy-abl.pl.m close-3sg.pRs-pass
thm a

‘The door is being closed (by the boys).’

(14) Swahili
a. Active:
sbj obj
mw-anafunzi a-li-som-a ki-tabu.
1-student 1sm-pst-read-fv 7-book
a thm

‘The student read the book.’

b. Passive:
sbj pp
ki-tabu ki-li-som-w-a na mw-anafunzi.
7-book 7sm-pst-read-pass-fv by 1-student
thm a

‘The book was read by the student.’

Chapter 10: A-movement of subjects: Passives and more 377

In these languages, it is the bound morphemes -toy-, -ur, and -w- (respectively) that result
in the effects of passivization mentioned above. As in English, the grammatical relations of the
agent and theme arguments differ in the active and the passive, and passive verb forms cannot
assign the Case that active verb forms can. So in Korean and Latin passives, the theme subjects
are nominative (nom) case, and accusative (acc) case becomes unacceptable.

(15) a. * 계획을 (철수에 의하여) 허락되었다.

Kyehoyk-ul (Chelswu-eyuyhaye) helak-toy-essta.
plans-acc Chelswu-by approve-pass-pst
Intended meaning: ‘The plans were approved (by Chelswu).’
b. * Port-am (a puer-īs) claud-it-ur.
door-acc.sg.f by boy-abl.pl.m close-3sg.pRs-pass
Intended meaning: ‘The door is being closed by the boys.’

In Swahili, there is no overt case-marking of nominals, so the form of the agent argument
and the theme argument does not change between the active and passive sentences.

A movement analysis of the passive 10.3

10.3.1 Passive of simple sentences

Our analysis of the passive is based on the premise that theme arguments originate in the same
structural position in both the active and the passive. This means that the elementary trees for
active and passive participles both contain a complement position. However, the relevant ele-
mentary trees differ in two important ways. First, in the active, the agent argument is obligatorily
linked to (= expressed in) Spec,VP, whereas in the passive, it is linked to an optional adjunct by-
phrase. We will visually underline this by omitting Spec,VP in our elementary trees for passive
participles. Second, passive participles in English (and passive verbs more generally) cannot as-
sign objective Case; recall the ungrammaticality of (11b). (We will generally not represent this
property in the elementary tree explicitly.) The elementary trees we propose for active and pas-
sive participles are thus as shown in (16).
Chapter 10: A-movement of subjects: Passives and more 378

(16) a. VP b. VP

»DP« V′ V′

V◦ »DP« V◦ »DP«
active verb passive verb

Active verb: assigns Case Passive verb: cannot assign Case

In what follows, we illustrate the derivation of a passive sentence like (17).

(17) The proposal was adopted.

First, we substitute the theme argument the proposal in the elementary tree for the passive main
verb in (16b). This yields (18a). Then, we substitute (18a) as the complement of the passive
auxiliary verb be, as in (18b). In order to distinguish the auxiliary verb (be) from the main verb
(adopted), we give it the syntactic category Aux. Finally, we substitute the resulting structure as
the complement of I, as in (18c).2

(18) a. VP b. AuxP

V′ Aux′

V◦ DP Aux◦ VP
adopted be
the proposal V′

V◦ DP
adopted
the proposal

Substitute theme argument in (16b) Substitute (18a) as complement

of passive auxiliary
Chapter 10: A-movement of subjects: Passives and more 379

c. IP

I′

I◦ AuxP
[pst]
[Case:nom] Aux′
∙[𝜑: ]∙
Aux◦ VP
be
V′

V◦ DP [𝜑: 3Rd,sg ]
[Case: ]
adopted
the proposal

Substitute (18b) as complement of I◦

Notice that the 𝜑-probe is designated (with bullets) as a Probe that will undergo Probe-Goal Union:
the Goal of Agree with the Probe will move to Spec,IP. This also allows us to stop annotating
Spec,IP as a substition node (which we had been doing like this: »DP«) since that observation is
now captured by the properties of the 𝜑-probe.3
Because of the inability of the passive participle V◦ adopted to assign objective Case (which
we discuss in more depth in Chapter 13), the theme argument cannot receive Case in the com-
plement position. Since every DP must receive Case (per the DP Licensing Condition: (61) of
Chapter 9), the theme argument can only be licensed by I◦ . In this instance, the absence of the
agent argument means that the theme argument is the closest to the 𝜑-probe on I◦ . This Probe
finds the theme argument that is the complement of V◦ as a Goal, and the theme DP undergoes
Probe-Goal Union, raising to Spec,IP. The resulting final structure is shown in (19).
Chapter 10: A-movement of subjects: Passives and more 380

(19) IP

DP [𝜑: 3Rd,sg ] I′
[Case: nom ]

I◦ AuxP
the proposal
[pst]
[Case: Nom] Aux′
∙[𝜑: 3Rd,sg ]∙
Aux◦ VP
was
V′

V◦ the proposal
adopted

10.3.2 Passive of ECM sentences

This section focuses on the passive of ECM verbs like expect, which were introduced in Chapter 9.
(20a) shows an active ECM verb sentence, and (20b) shows the corresponding passive.

(20) a. ✔ Your folks expect you to call.

b. ✔ You are expected to call.

The elementary tree for expect in (20a) is given in (21a). In accordance with the previous
discussion, the elementary tree for the passive participle expected is as in (21b). The difference
between the two trees is analogous to that between the trees in (16); the only difference is the
syntactic category of the complement (DP in the Case of ordinary verbs, IP in the Case of ECM
verbs). As in (16b), the elementary tree (21b) has no agentive argument in its specifier, and the
verb lacks the ability to assign objective Case.

(21) a. VP b. VP

»DP« V′ V′

V◦ »IP« V◦ »IP«
expect expected

Active ECM verb: Passive ECM verb: cannot assign

assigns Case Case

In what follows, we illustrate the derivation of (20b). The derivation of the complement
clause is shown in (22); we assume that the complement subject moves from Spec,VP to Spec,IP
Chapter 10: A-movement of subjects: Passives and more 381

to provide the complement clause with a subject (recall the subject requirement discussed in
Chapter 4, which we suggested is encoded by an EPP feature in § 9.4.4 of Chapter 9).

(22) a. VP b. IP c. IP

DP V′ I′ DPi I′

you V◦ I◦ VP you I◦ VP
call to to
[epp] DP V′ [epp] t i V′

you V◦ V◦
call call

Complement VP Substitute (22a) as Move subject of

complement of complement clause
nonfinite I◦

The subsequent steps of the derivation involving the matrix clause are as shown in (18). We omit
the case and 𝜑-features of the DPs in order to avoid visually cluttering the trees too much.

(23) a. VP b.
AuxP
V′
Aux′
V◦ IP
expected Aux◦ VP
DPi I′
be
V′
you I◦ VP
to V◦ IP
t V′
[epp] i expected
DPi I′
V◦
call you I◦ VP
to
t V′
[epp] i
V◦
call

Substitute (22c) as complement of Substitute (23a) as complement of

passive participle of ECM verb passive auxiliary
Chapter 10: A-movement of subjects: Passives and more 382

c. IP
I′
I◦ AuxP
[pRs]
Aux′
[epp]
∙[𝜑: ]∙ Aux◦ VP
be
V′
V◦ IP
expected
DPi I′
you I◦ VP
to
t V′
[epp] i
V◦
call

Substitute (23b) as complement of matrix I◦

In (22c), the passive participle of the ECM verb, being passive, cannot assign Case to the sub-
ject of the complement clause, which must therefore move to the nearest Case position. This
is the matrix Spec,IP, where it receives nominative Case from finite I◦. Again, the subject of the
complement clause passes through Spec,AuxP on the way. The resulting structure is shown in
(24).

(24) IP
DPi I′
you I◦ AuxP
[pRs]
Aux′
[epp]
∙[𝜑: 2nd,sg ]∙ Aux◦ VP
be
V′
V◦ IP
expected
ti I′
I◦ VP
to
t V′
[epp] i
V◦
call
Chapter 10: A-movement of subjects: Passives and more 383

10.3.3 Evidence for A-movement in passives: selectional restrictions

As we discussed in Chapter 7 passive constructions show interesting effects when considered
alongside diagnostic properties for selection, including selectional restrictions and idiom chunks.
We revisit those facts briefly here to show that the analysis of passives presented here accords
with other properties that we’ve used to diagnose movement in other instances. Specifically, if
theme arguments of passives start their derivational life as the complement of the verb, we would
expect that the selectional restrictions that verbs place on their objects would persist in passives,
and we would expect that the verb-object V′ constituent would be a candidate for idioms that
could persist in passive constructions.
Both of these predictions are upheld. As discussed previously, in English kill and murder
have different selectional properties with respect to their objects (as shown in (25)). These same
selectional restrictions hold of the derived subjects in (26), supporting the view that there is a
derivational connection.

(25) a. The paramilitary murdered { ✔their parents, #the olive trees, #their houses }.
b. The paramilitary killed { ✔their parents, ✔the olive trees, #their houses }.

(26) a. { ✔their parents, #the olive trees, #their houses } were murdered by the paramilitary.
b. { ✔their parents, ✔the olive trees, #their houses } were killed by the paramilitary.

The same is evident for verb-object idiom chunks. The idioms in (27) maintain their idiomatic
interpretations in the passive sentences in (28).

(27) a. They { gave, paid } hardly any heed to our proposal.

b. The Prime Minister paid due homage to the dead.
c. The government keeps close tabs on their operations.

(28) a. ✔ Hardly any heed was { given, paid } to our proposal.

b. ✔ Due homage was paid by the Prime Minister to the dead.
c. ✔ Close tabs were kept on their operations by the government.

Distinguishing active and passive sentences 10.4

Empirically, it is easy to distinguish between active and passive sentences. Active sentences have
overt agents and license accusative objects, whereas passive sentences suppress their agent and
the thematic object is instead promoted to subject position. But what in our model accomplishes
this? What creates an active versus a passive version of a verb in question? The short answer is
that we don’t yet have the full theoretical toolkit that we need in order to do this: we will be much
closer by the end of Chapter 13. So at present we just discuss several of the salient issues.
Chapter 10: A-movement of subjects: Passives and more 384

We introduced an Aux above that appears in English passive sentences. In English, this is
be: we use be for many functions in English, including progressive (They are running) and as a
copula (They are my friends). But these are in fact not the same be: this is evident in (29), where
a passive construction is in progressive aspect, and two instances of be-verbs appear.

(29) The apples that I cut up for lunch are being eaten right now.

So if we want to be specific, we could call the auxiliary that occurs in passives its own sep-
arate thing, perhaps a Passive head (Pass◦ ) that projects to a Passive Phrase (PassP). To simplify,
we’ll focus on a very simple passive sentence as in (30). We can imagine the tree structure of (30)
would start something like in (31).

(30) The apple was eaten.

(31) PassP

Pass′

Pass◦ VP
be
V′

V◦ DP
eaten
the apple

Having a separate projection for passives helps explain the dedicated auxiliary for passives.
But note that there is more going on here: the verb eat is typically transitive, and as such we would
typically expect an elementary tree for an eat VP that looks something like in (32), which notably
includes an agent.

(32) Elementary tree for eat

VP

»DP« V′

agent V◦ »DP«
eat
theme

But a hallmark of passive sentences is that agentive subjects are suppressed or absent, as in (31).
But including a passive auxiliary doesn’t clearly (in our model) have any good reason for sup-
pressing the agentive subject inside the phrase below it. What does one thing have to do with
the other?
A similar problem exists around Case in passives. As we saw above, in a passive sentence
even though the subject is a theme argument, it is nonetheless marked with nominative Case, the
Case normally reserved for subjects.
Chapter 10: A-movement of subjects: Passives and more 385

(33) a. They visited her.

b. She was visited.
c. * Her was visited.

This fits many aspects of our model: if the theme argument is the target of Agree from I◦ as
part of the explanation for agreement with I◦ and movement to Spec,IP, we would in fact expect
the result that it is marked with nominative Case. But this doesn’t explain why accusative Case
simply seems to disappear in passives. Nothing about adding a PassP for the passive auxiliary
explains this directly.
We’re not going to solve this right now: we will in Chapter 13. We simply want to point
out that there are open questions. The lessons that we are taking from passives here is that they
are another instance of movement, but specifically an A-movement with a landing site in Spec,IP
(not an A′ -movement landing in Spec,CP). And as we’ve noted above, A-movement has a different
locality profile than A′ -movement.

Unaccusatives: Inherently passive predicates 10.5

English has a class of verbs called inchoative or unaccusative predicates that have a passive flavor,
but are not passive verbs.

(34) The vase dropped.

As with passive sentences, sentences containing these verbs have subjects that are themes rather
than agents. However, unlike passives, they do not allow the expression of an agent, as shown
in (35).

(35) * The vase dropped by the child. (ungrammatical on agentive reading of by-phrase)

This is despite the fact that the related transitive sentence does have a passive variant.

(36) a. The child dropped the vase.

b. The vase was dropped by the child.

So the intransitive drop does have a theme subject, but it lacks other properties of the passive. In
a sense, it feels inherently passive: a predicate that, as the usual manner of course, has a theme
subject and not an agentive subject. But is there any difference between an intransitive with a
theme subject and one with an agent subject?
In fact, many languages do show a difference like this. One famous example is the ne-
morpheme that cliticizes (attaches) onto the verb in Italian that can be used to mark quantified
direct objects, pronominalizing the nominal inside the quantifier as in (37b). This discussion
follows the argumentation laid out in Burzio (1986).4
Chapter 10: A-movement of subjects: Passives and more 386

(37) a. Gianni inviterà molti studenti. Italian

Gianni will.invite many students
‘Gianni will invite many students.’
b. Gianni *(ne) inviterà molti.
Gianni of-them will.invite many
‘Gianni will invite many of them.’

Subjects generally disallow use of ne-cliticization.

(38) a. Molti (*ne) inviteranno Gianni. Italian

many (*of-them) will.invite Gianni
‘Many will invite Gianni.’
b. Molti (*ne) telefoneranno.
many (*of-them) will.telephone
‘Many will telephone.’

In passive sentences, however, it is possible to use the ne-cliticization with the derived subject of
the passive.

(39) a. Molti esperti saranno invitati. Italian

many experts will.be invited.
‘Many experts will be invited.’
b. Ne saranno invitati molti.
of-them will.be invited many.
‘Many of them will be invited.’

Burzio (1986) concludes that ne-cliticization is only possible with underlying direct objects
of the verb, even if they become subjects in passives. But this raises a puzzle when it comes to
intransitive predicates. As we might expect, the intransitive verb to telephone (call) is impossible
with ne-cliticization.

(40) a. Molti esperti telefoneranno. Italian

Many experts will.telephone.
‘Many experts will telephone.’
b. * Ne telefonano molti.
of-them telephone many
‘Many of them telephone.’

But some intransitive verbs behave differently; the verb arrive, in contrast, allows ne-
cliticization.

(41) a. Molti esperti arriveranno. Italian

Many experts will.arrive.
‘Many experts will arrive.’
b. Ne arrivano molti.
of-them arrive many
‘Many of them arrive.’
Chapter 10: A-movement of subjects: Passives and more 387

In short, the subject of arrive behaves as if it is underlyingly a direct object, not a sub-
ject. Looking at thematic roles, this is less surprising: the subject of intransitive telephone/call is
agentive, plausibly an agent. The subject of arrive has no such requirement: a train can arrive,
a storm can arrive, the day of a party can arrive. So arrive instead behaves like its subject is
a theme. In this sense, then, some predicates behave like they are inherently passive, taking a
theme object and A-moving that object to canonical subject position.
Predicates that behave in this manner are called unaccusative predicates: they take a theme
argument but don’t license accusative Case on the theme, so it becomes the subject of the sen-
tence. We can capture the inherently passive quality of unaccusative predicates by treating them
with a core similarity: their subjects originate in the canonical positions for theme subjects, as
complement to the verb. These predicates don’t have an agent argument.

(42) Unaccusative predicate elementary tree

VP

V′

V◦ »DP«
unaccusative
theme

This contrasts with an intransitive predicate that does take an agent argument, e.g. sing.
Here we would expect our agent to appear in the canonical position for agents, which for us
at this point is Spec,VP. We refer to these predicates as unergative, for reasons that are arcane
enough to not be worth spelling out.

(43) Unergative predicate elementary tree

VP

»DP« V′

agent V◦
uneRgative

In typical instances, neither the theme argument nor the agent argument are Case-licensed in
their base position: both must necessarily be a Goal of Agree with I◦ , receive nominative Case,
and in English raise to Spec,IP. So on the surface, unaccusative and unergative verbs tend to
behave similarly in most sentences. But some languages have grammatical constructions (like
ne-cliticization) that distinguish between them.
Are distinctions between unaccusatives and unergatives universal? It depends what is
meant by that question. The specific grammatical properties that distinguish between them are
certainly not universal. The ne-marking quirk of Italian is just that: a quirk of Italian. English
(for example) has no parallel construction. And not all languages have grammatical properties
that distinguish these classes of predicates (at least, it has not yet been demonstrated to be the
case). But nothing about our model requires that a language have a grammatical property that
Chapter 10: A-movement of subjects: Passives and more 388

shows variation between unaccusatives and unergative predicates: we can still analyse them as
having these distinctive underlying VP structures. And we do this because there are in fact a
large variety of unrelated languages that do show grammatical properties that distinguish be-
tween unaccusative and unergative predicates. It is not necessarily universal, but it is much too
common to be a coincidence. So we will maintain the view that UTAH holds, and that even in
intransitive predicates there are different underlying structures for predicates that take a theme
argument and those that take an agent argument.

Conclusions 10.6
Passive constructions and unaccusative constructions are a key reason why linguists necessar-
ily distinguish between thematic roles and grammatical roles: mismatches between the two are
readily found. Theme arguments are canonically direct objects, but by no means must they be
direct objects: they can be subjects in passives and in unaccusatives. Likewise, agent arguments
are typically subjects, but not always so (for example, agent arguments appear in a by-phrase in
a passive sentence).
If themes are possible subjects, why are they not typical subjects? that is, why does the
theme never get promoted to subject in the presence of an agent? Another way of saying this is to
ask: why are agents canonical subjects? These facts fall out naturally from our assumptions about
UTAH and the locality of probing from I◦ . UTAH claims that agents are structurally higher than
themes (universally). And if A-movement to subject will find the most local DP, the structurally
higher DP will be the one that is the Goal of Agree by I◦ . So in any typical transitive construction,
agents will be the grammatical subject. But this is effectively a conspiracy of various different
underlying circumstances; there is no requirement in our theory that agents be subjects.
We have used passives and unaccusatives to exemplify A-movement. We previously had
seen A-movement of agent arguments from Spec,VP to Spec,IP, but this chapter has shown
that VPISH-related subject movement is part of a larger class of movements (which we call A-
movements). Therefore, we now have two profiles of phrasal movement: movement to argu-
ment positions (A-movement) vs. movement to non-argument positions (A′ -movement). As a
reminder, A versus A′ is an unfortunate replication of terminology—here it is NOT a reference to
intermediate bar-levels in X′ -syntax. Shorthand for us at present is A′ -movement is to Spec,CP
for discourse purposes, and A-movement is to Spec,IP for Case purposes.
 Chapter 10: A-movement of subjects: Passives and more 389

New Empirical Observations

▶ Passives do not assign accusative Case.

▶ Passives place the same selectional restrictions on their derived subjects that their
active equivalents place on their objects.

Components of the Theoretical Model

▶ A-movement (movement to Case-licensing positions)

▶ A-movement vs. A′ -movement (different profiles of movement)
▶ locality of probing (I◦ probes for the closest DP)
▶ unaccusatives vs. unergatives
▶ reaffirmation of UTAH principles

Notes 10.7
1. There are principled exceptions to this statement, like the cross-linguistic existence of locative inversion construc-
tions. In general, though, A-movement is restricted to DPs in a way that A′ -movement is not.

◦
2. As we will see in Chapter 12, auxiliary be and have move from their original position to I , where they form a
complex verb with the tense morpheme. As this movement is irrelevant for present purposes, we ignore it here and
throughout the chapter.

3. And the EPP quality of IP in English: see the discussion in § 9.4.4 of Chapter 9.

4. The specific data presentation/structure in this sequence is drawn from Pesetsky (2003), though they directly parallel
what is presented in Burzio (1986), with minor adjustments.
Chapter 10: A-movement of subjects: Passives and more 390

Exercises and problems 10.8

Exercise 10.1: Basic practice with passives
Draw trees for the passive sentences in (1). For each one, explain (in prose) how Case plays a
role. Draw triangles over DPs, PPs, and the bracketed phrases.

(1) a. the window was broken by the baseball.

b. Bald eagles were protected [ as an endangered species. ]
c. Instructions for making wine: Next, the grapes are crushed.
d. The onions were chopped by the line chef.
e. The votes were being counted.

Exercise 10.2: Basic practice with intransitives

Draw trees for the intransitive sentences in (1). For each one, explain (in prose) how Case plays
a role. Draw triangles over DPs, PPs, and the bracketed phrases.

(1) a. The ball rolled down the hill.

b. The choir sang beautifully.
c. The cat jumped very high.
d. The cat slept peacefully.
e. The storm arrived earlier [ than predicted. ]
f. The butter melted in the pan.

Exercise 10.3: Japanese voice

Examine the following Japanese sentences.
A. Label the subject, object (if there is one), agent/cause, and patient in each of these sentences.
B. Which sentences are active, and which are passive?
C. How are active and passive sentences marked in Japanese? (Hint: the passive marking has
two similar-looking allomorphs in these data.)
Note: Topic marking alternations have been suppressed from these data for simplicity, but be
aware students who are native speakers of Japanese may find some of these sentences pragmat-
ically odd without context.

(1) 蚊が 僕を 刺した
Ka-ga boku-o sashi-ta.
mosquito-nom 1sg-acc prick-pst
‘A mosquito bit me.’
Chapter 10: A-movement of subjects: Passives and more 391

(2) 僕が 蚊に 刺された
Boku-ga ka-ni sas-are-ta.
1sg-nom mosquito-by prick-aRe-pst
‘I was bitten by a mosquito.’
(3) 大風が 木を 吹き倒した
Oo-kaze-ga ki-o fuki-taoshi-ta.
big-wind-nom tree-acc blow-down-pst
‘A strong wind blew the tree down.’
(4) 木が 大風に 吹き倒された
Ki-ga oo-kaze-ni fuki-taos-are-ta.
tree-nom big-wind-by blow-down-aRe-pst
‘The tree was blown down by a strong wind.’
(5) 悠ちゃんが カエルを 捕まえた
Yū-chan-ga kaeru-o tsukamae-ta.
Yū-dim-nom frog-acc catch-pst
‘Yū caught a frog.’
(6) カエルが 悠ちゃんに 捕まえられた
Kaeru-ga Yū-chan-ni tsukamae-rare-ta.
frog-nom Yū-by catch-RaRe-pst
‘The frog was caught by Yū.’

Exercise 10.4: Tiriki voice

Examine the following Tiriki (Bantu, Kenya) sentences.
A. Label the subject, object (if there is one), agent/cause, and patient in each of these sentences.
B. Which sentences are active, and which are passive?
C. How are active and passive sentences marked in Tiriki?
Glossing: Cardinal numbers mark noun class. sm = subject marker; pst = past tense; fv = final
vowel (marks mood and other properties); agR = agreement

(1) a. I-suna y-a-um-a va-ana.

9-mosquito 9sm-pst-bite-fv 2-child
‘A mosquito bit the children.’
b. Va-ana va-a-lum-w-a na i-suna.
2-child 2sm-pst-bite-?-fv by 9-mosquito
‘The children were bitten by a mosquito.’

(2) a. I-mbutsa i-ndulu y-a-huts-a ma-tuma hasi.

9-wind 9agR-strong 9sm-pst-knock.down-fv 6-maize down
‘A strong wind blew/knocked the maize down’
b. Ma-tuma ka-a-huts-w-a hasi na i-mbutsa i-ndulu.
6-maize 6sm-pst-knock.down-?-fv down by 9-wind 9agR-strong
‘The maize was blown/knocked down by a strong wind.’
Chapter 10: A-movement of subjects: Passives and more 392

(3) a. Inganji y-a-kumil-a li-shele.

1Inganji 1sm-pst-catch-fv 5-frog
‘Inganji caught a frog.’
b. Li-shele ly-a-kumil-w-a na Inganji.
5-frog 5sm-pst-catch-?-fv by 1Ingaji
‘The frog was caught by Inganji.’

(4) a. I-nzukha y-a-lond-a va-ana.

9-snake 9sm-pst-chase-fv 2-child
‘A snake chased the children.’
b. Va-ana va-a-lond-w-a na i-nzukha.
2-child 2sm-pst-chase-?-fv by 9-snake
‘The children were chased by a snake.’

Exercise 10.5: Clarifying concepts

Which, if any, of the following sentences are true? Support your conclusions with evidence.

(1) a. All subjects are agents.

b. All agents are subjects.
c. All subjects get nominative Case.
d. All noun phrases that get nominative Case are subjects.

Exercise 10.6: Structures for get-passives

Build structures for the sentences in (1).

(1) a. The puppeteers might get arrested.

b. The puppeteers got arrested.

Exercise 10.7: Expletives and passives

Explain the grammaticality pattern in (1), including how expletive there is licensed. Do noun
phrases (DPs) differ from clauses (CPs, IPs) with respect to Case assignment? Assume for sim-
plicity that expletive it substitutes directly into Spec,IP.

(1) a. It was suspected that there was a problem with the O-ring.
b. That there was a problem with the O-ring was suspected.
c. There was suspected to be a problem with the O-ring.
d. * There to be a problem with the O-ring was suspected.
Chapter 10: A-movement of subjects: Passives and more 393

Problem 10.1: Passives and ECM A

The active sentence in (1) has two conceivable passive counterparts in (2): the grammatical (2a)
and the completely ungrammatical (2b) (intended to have the same meaning as (2a)). Why is (2b)
ungrammatical?

(1) The administration will expect us to hire them.

(2) a. ✔ We will be expected to hire them.
b. * { They, them } will be expected { we, us } to hire.

Problem 10.2: Passives and ECM B

Consider the following judgments for the sentences with expect in (1) and (2).

(1) a. ✔ They expected there to be a solution.

b. ✔ There was expected to be a solution.
(2) a. * They expected for there to be a solution.
b. * There was expected for to be a solution.

Now consider the corresponding judgments for sentences with want in (3) and (4).

(3) a. ✔ They wanted there to be a solution.

b. * There was wanted to be a solution.
(4) a. ✔ They wanted for there to be a solution.
b. * There was wanted for to be a solution.
A. The judgments for the sentences with expect are as expected given our discussion in this
and the previous chapter. The judgments for the sentences with want can be made to be
consistent with the discussion as well. How so?
B. For some speakers, (2a) is grammatical. The remaining judgments remain the same. Revise
your answers to (A) to account for this pattern of judgments.

Problem 10.3: Passives and ECM C

A. Build structures for the sentences in (1) and (2).

(1) a. We expect them to make headway.

b. We expect headway to be made.
c. Headway is expected to be made.
(2) a. The media expect the guerrillas to release the journalist.
b. The media expect the journalist to be released by the guerrillas.
c. The journalist is expected to be released by the guerrillas.

B. One of the sentences in (2) is structurally ambiguous. Which one is it, and why?
Chapter 10: A-movement of subjects: Passives and more 394

Identifying Puzzles 10.1: Restrictions on passives

There is a pattern in the follow examples regarding what arguments can be passivized or not.
Give an empirical description of what is happening in these examples based on concepts from
this textbook, being as precise as possible. Then, discuss the ways in which this impacts the
theory of passives we have presented in this chapter. What is well-explained, and what is not
(yet) well-explained? You don’t have to have a complete analysis of the pattern; rather, explain
with precision the puzzle that this raises that requires an explantion.

(1) ✔ The carpenter measured the boards.

(2) ✔ The boards were measured by the carpenter.
(3) a. ✔ The tickets cost 100 dollars.
b. ✔ The concert lasted two hours.
c. ✔ The carpenter measures 5′10″.
d. ✔ Louis XIV reigned 72 years.
e. ✔ The trip took two hours.
(4) a. * 100 dollars are cost by the tickets.
b. * Two hours were lasted by the concert.
c. * 5′10″ is measured by the carpenter.
d. * 72 years were reigned by Louis XIV.
e. * Two hours were taken by the trip.
Subject control versus
11
raising

Chapter outline
11.1 Overviewing complement clauses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 396
11.2 Subject control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 398
11.2.1 Evidence for two clauses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 398
11.2.2 Deriving subject control sentences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 399
11.3 Raising . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 402
11.3.1 A “what if” detour . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 402
11.3.2 Nonthematic subject positions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 403
11.3.3 Deriving raising sentences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 404
11.4 More nonthematic subjects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 407
11.4.1 Subject idiom chunks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 408
11.4.2 Weather it . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 409
11.4.3 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 409
11.5 Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 411
11.6 Exercises and problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 412

There are recurring classes of matrix predicates cross-linguistically where one argument
seems to be shared between the main clause and an embedded clause (ex., Preston seems to be
happy, Preston hopes to be happy). Syntacticians have found these classes of predicates to be
interesting puzzles that also are good testing grounds for underlying properties of our model,
such as Case-licensing, locality of probing, and A-movement. This chapter overviews the two
predominant areas that these discussions have centered on: raising constructions and control con-
structions.
Chapter 11: Subject control versus raising 396

Overviewing complement clauses 11.1

So far in this book, we have come across three types of clausal complements, summarized in the
following table. (By ‘clausal complement’, we mean any complement that contains a subject and
a predicate.) The clausal complement is bracketed, and the complement’s I head, if any, is in
boldface.

Type of complement I is… Matrix Complement

Finite complement modal or tense We heard [ that the children [pst] danced ].
ECM complement nonfinite to We expected [ the children to dance ].
Small clause absent We saw [ the children dance ].

Table 11.1: Summary of clausal complements up to this point

Despite their superficial diversity, the complement clause types in Table 11.1 all have one property
in common—the presence of an overt subject (here, the children). But English also has nonfinite
complement clauses where a subject is understood, but not expressed overtly. For instance, dance,
the verb in the apparently subjectless complement clauses in (1), has an understood agent.

(1) a. Subject control:

The children agreed [ to dance ].
b. Raising:
The children seemed [ to dance ].

In both sentences, this agent is interpreted as being identical to the referent of the matrix subject
the children. Yet unlike the second row of Table 11.1, where the matrix clause and the complement
clause each have their own subject (we, the children), the sentences in (1) contain only a single
overt subject, the one in the matrix clause. In this chapter, we argue that the nonfinite comple-
ments in (1) contain a structural subject position, just as in Table 11.1, which is filled by a silent
element, and we argue further that this silent element is not the same in the two examples. Rather,
we distinguish between subject control and raising (sometimes called subject-to-subject rais-
ing), as already indicated by the labels in (1).

Background Info

Some of the discussion here uses terms like reference, refer, and corefer (among others).
If these are not clear from the glossary and our explanations here, you can consult § 15.1
for a more complete exposition.

In a subject control sentence like (1a), the complement subject position is filled by a silent
pronominal element PRO, which corefers with the referent of the matrix subject. PRO has been
Chapter 11: Subject control versus raising 397

proposed as a special kind of pronoun that only occurs in very particular positions (namely,
subjects of nonfinite clauses). In other words, we give (1a) the structure in (2a), by analogy
to that in (2b). (The numerical subscripts on the children, PRO, and they represent coreference,
meaning that they all refer to the same real-world entity (here, the children).)

(2) a. [ The children ]1 agreed [ ∅ PRO1 to dance ].

b. [ The children ]1 agreed [ that they1 would dance ].

Extra Info
The idea behind the term ‘subject control’ is that the matrix subject fixes, or controls, the
reference of PRO. Notice that the parallel between PRO and overt pronouns in (2) is not
complete. PRO in (2a) must corefer with the matrix subject, whereas the overt pronoun in
(2b) needn’t. This is succinctly summarized by the notation in (i).
(i) a. [ The children ]1 agreed [ ∅ PRO1,*2 to dance ].
b. [ The children ]1 agreed [ that they1,2 would dance ].
It’s for this reason that only sentences where the clausal complement is nonfinite can
count as instances of subject control.

Raising sentences differ from subject control sentences in that the matrix subject does not
start out in the matrix clause, but rather moves there from the complement clause. Omitting
unnecessary details for the moment, the derivation is illustrated in (3).

(3) a. seemed [ the children to dance ].

b. [ The children ]i seemed [ t i to dance ].

The assumption that the matrix subject position starts out empty is supported by the fact that
when seem takes a finite counterpart, that same position is filled by expletive it.

(4) Itexpl seemed [ that the children danced ].

Extra Info
Analogously to subject control, for a sentence to count as an instance of raising, the
complement clause must be nonfinite, as in (3), since it is only then that the complement
subject raises into the matrix clause. (4) contains the same matrix predicate as (3), but it is
not an instance of raising because the complement subject remains within its clause.

A note on terminology. We will refer to the class of (Fregean) predicates to which agree
belongs as subject control predicates. Similarly, we refer to the class of predicates like seem as
raising predicates, that is, predicates whose subjects raise out of their complement clause.
These two different analyses for classes of predicates that otherwise (often) appear very
similar on the surface creates a range of predictions: we would expect, for example, that raising
predicates consistently behave like they don’t assign a thematic role to their subject, whereas
control predicates would behave like they do. And due to that, we would expect control predicates
to place selectional restrictions on their subjects in ways that raising predicates do not. In short,
Chapter 11: Subject control versus raising 398

proposing that these two have different structures should be diagnosable: in what follows, we
show that it is.

Subject control 11.2

11.2.1 Evidence for two clauses

This section relies on the notion of selectional restrictions introduced in Chapter 7. Here, we
will use the concept to show that subject control sentences contain two separate clauses, each
with their own subject. We begin by showing that in finite-complement counterparts of subject
control sentences like (5), which incontrovertibly contain two clauses, both the matrix and the
complement verbs (or predicates more generally) impose separate selectional restrictions on their
respective subjects. (For simplicity, we omit referential indices in what follows; unless otherwise
noted, the intended interpretation is always the one where the complement subject corefers with
the matrix subject.)

(5) The children agreed that they would dance.

Consider (6), where we have taken care to satisfy the selectional requirements of the com-
plement clause (wet selects some physical object as its argument, and get imposes no further
selectional restrictions of its own). We can therefore be sure that the acceptability contrast in (6)
is due to the selectional restriction imposed by the matrix verb agree, which selects humans as
subjects.

(6) a. The children agreed [ that they would get wet ].

b. # The { trees, rocks } agreed [ that they would get wet ].

Conversely, in (7), we have taken care to satisfy the selectional restriction imposed by agree.
Here, the acceptability contrast is due to the selectional restrictions imposed by the complement
predicates. In particular, elapse selects stretches of time, and evaporate selects liquids. Neither
selects humans.

(7) a. The children agreed [ that they would speak Twi ].

b. # The children agreed [ that they would { elapse, evaporate } ].

If subject control sentences contain two clauses, as we are proposing, each with their own
subjects, they ought to pattern analogously to (6) and (7), and this is in fact exactly what we find
in (8) and (9).1

(8) a. The children agreed [ PRO to get wet ].

b. # The { trees, rocks } agreed [ PRO to get wet ].
Chapter 11: Subject control versus raising 399

(9) a. The children agreed [ PRO to speak Twi ].

b. # The children agreed [ PRO to { elapse, evaporate } ].

One last thing. Not all subject control predicates have a finite-complement variant.

(10) a. The children tried [ PRO to learn Twi ].

b. * The children tried [ that they would learn Twi ].

But even for such subject control predicates, we assume a biclausal structure with a PRO subject
for the lower clause. This is because, just as in (8) and (9), the subject control verb and the lower
predicate impose separate selectional restrictions on their respective subjects.

11.2.2 Deriving subject control sentences

Given the facts just discussed, it comes as no surprise that the syntactic representation of subject
control sentences is straightforwardly analogous to that of their finite complement counterparts.
The elementary tree for agree is the same for both cases and is given in (11).

(11) VP

»DP« V′

V◦ »CP«
agree

Substituting a finite CP complement headed by that at the CP substitution node would yield
structures for sentences like (5). Substituting a nonfinite CP complement headed by a silent com-
plementizer yields structures for subject control sentences like (1a). In what follows, we illustrate
the derivation of (1a) in relative detail, though we omit many features (ex., case/agreement) that
are not central to our current points.

(12) a. VP b. IP

DP V′ DPi I′

PRO V◦ PRO I◦ VP
dance to
ti V′

V◦
dance

Substitute PRO in specifier Substitute (12a) as complement

position of lower verb of to and move subject
Chapter 11: Subject control versus raising 400

c. CP

C′

C◦ IP
∅
DPi I′

PRO I◦ VP
to
ti V′

V◦
dance

Substitute (12b) as complement

of silent C◦

Substituting the structure in (12c) as the complement of the control verb yields (13a), which in
turn becomes the complement of matrix I◦, yielding (13b).

(13) a. VP

DP V′

the children V◦ CP
agree
C′

C◦ IP
∅
DPi I′

PRO I◦ VP
to
ti V′

V◦
dance
Chapter 11: Subject control versus raising 401

b. IP

I′

I◦ VP
[pst]
DP V′

the children V◦ CP
agree
C′

C◦ IP
∅
DPi I′

PRO I◦ VP
to
ti V′

V◦
dance

Finally, moving the matrix subject yields (14a). The structurally analogous tree for the finite
complement counterpart of (14a) (= (5)) is shown for comparison in (14b). As is evident, the trees
differ only in a few terminal nodes.2

(14) a. IP
DPk I′
the children I◦ VP
[pst]
tk V′
V◦ CP
agree
C′
C◦ IP
∅
DPi I′
PRO I◦ VP
to
ti V′
V◦
dance
Chapter 11: Subject control versus raising 402

b. IP
DPk I′
the children I◦ VP
[pst]
tk V′
V◦ CP
agreed
C′
C◦ IP
that
DPi I′
they I◦ VP
would
ti V′
V◦
dance

Raising 11.3

11.3.1 A “what if” detour

Let us turn now to raising sentences like (1b), repeated here as (15).

(15) The children seemed [ to dance ].

At first glance, it seems as if we could treat such sentences as instances of subject control. But
that would leave us without an explanation for the contrast in (16)—in particular, for the gram-
maticality of (16b).

(16) a. * There agreed to be a problem.

b. ✔ There seemed to be a problem.

The analysis in the previous section does correctly rule out (16a), to which we assign the
structure indicated schematically in (17).

(17) * There agreed [ PRO to be a problem. ]

(17) is ruled out for two reasons. First, expletive there fails to satisfy the selectional restriction
of agree, which, as we saw earlier, selects humans as subjects. Second, and conversely, expletive
Chapter 11: Subject control versus raising 403

there is itself not licensed; it neither occupies the specifier position of a verb of (coming into)
existence nor can it have originated in such a position.
It is true that the sentence contains the there licenser be, but there never substitutes into
its specifier position. The predicate whose specifier position there does substitute into, namely
agree, is not a there licenser.

(18) * There agreed some students.

So (17) correctly rules out (16a) as ungrammatical. But by the same token, if we give (16a)
the analogous structure in (19), we incorrectly expect (16b) to be ungrammatical on a par with
(16a).

(19) Incorrect structure: There seemed [ PRO to be a problem ].

The reason is that there in the representation in (19), once again, is not licensed, as shown by the
ungrammaticality of (20).

(20) * There seemed a problem.

It is important to understand that although agree is a subject control predicate and seem is not,
both verbs share the property of not being there licensers.

11.3.2 Nonthematic subject positions

At this point, notice that the representations in (17) and (19) are both ruled out because there isn’t
licensed in the matrix clause. However, only in (17) is the matrix verb’s selectional restriction
violated. It turns out that a crucial difference between agree and seem is that seem imposes no
selectional restrictions. We can see this by replacing agree in (8) with seem, as we do in (21); the
acceptability contrast between (8a) and (8b) then disappears.

(21) a. The children seemed to get wet.

b. The { trees, rocks } seemed to get wet.

Another noteworthy property of seem is that its specifier position is not (and, in fact, must
not be) associated with any thematic role. It is true that seem takes an argument: what for lack of
a better term we will call the proposition argument (its complement clause).3 However, for some
reason, this argument cannot substitute into the specifier position, as we clearly see in the finite
complement counterparts of raising sentences.4

(22) a. It seems that the problem was too hard.

b. * That the problem was too hard seems.

To summarize: the subject position of seem is semantically deficient in the sense that it
is associated neither with selectional restrictions nor with a thematic role. We will call such a
subject position nonthematic.
Chapter 11: Subject control versus raising 404

11.3.3 Deriving raising sentences

Of course, despite being superfluous from a semantic point of view, nonthematic subject positions
are nevertheless syntactically obligatory (recall the subject requirement, § 4.1 and § 9.4.4). This
makes possible the following analysis of subject raising sentences, which we illustrate by deriving
(16b). We begin by deriving the complement clause. Note how the eventual matrix subject there is
licensed in (23a) as the specifier of main verb be. We assume that the subject moves from Spec(VP)
to Spec(IP) in (23b) in order to provide the complement clause with a subject in accordance with
the subject requirement, satisfying the EPP.

(23) a. VP b. IP

DP V′ DPi I′

there V◦ DP there I◦ VP
be to
a problem [epp] t i V′

V◦ DP
be
a problem

Substitute eventual matrix subject as Substitute (23a) as complement of to

specifier of lower verb and subject movement

We now substitute (23b) into the elementary tree for seem in (24a).

(24) a. VP b. VP

»DP« V′ »DP« V′

V◦ »IP« V◦ »CP«
seem seem

Elementary tree for nonfinite Elementary tree for finite

complement, cf. (29a) complement, cf. (29b)

Before proceeding with the derivation, a few words about the elementary trees in (24) are in order.
First, notice that both elementary trees in (24) contain a specifier position. Though semantically
unnecessary, as discussed above, this position is motivated by the obligatoriness of expletive it
in small clauses.
Chapter 11: Subject control versus raising 405

(25) a. They made [VP it seem that there was a problem ].

b. * They made [VP seem that there was a problem ].

Second, the syntactic category of the clausal complement is IP in (24a), whereas it is CP in (24b),
which is the elementary tree we would use in order to derive the finite complement counterpart
of (16b) (It seemed that there was a problem).
Substituting the clause in (23b) as the complement of the elementary tree for raising seem
in (24a) yields (26a), which in turn becomes the complement of the matrix I◦ element, yielding
(26b).

(26) a. VP

»DP« V′

V◦ IP
seem
DPi I′

there I◦ VP
to
ti V′

V◦ DP
be
a problem
b. IP

»DP« I′

I◦ VP
[pst]
»DP« V′

V◦ IP
seem
DPi I′

there I◦ VP
to
ti V′

V◦ DP
be
a problem
Chapter 11: Subject control versus raising 406

At this point in the derivation, the option arises in principle of substituting expletive it in
the matrix Spec(VP) and moving it to the matrix Spec(IP). In fact, this is what we would do if the
complement of seem were finite. In the case of a nonfinite complement, however, this step yields
the ungrammatical (27).

(27) * Itexpl seemed there to be a problem.

Why is (27) ungrammatical? The equally ungrammatical (28a) provides a hint; the ungram-
maticality of the unambiguously objective case form them is reminiscent of (11b) in Chapter 10,
repeated here as (28b).

(28) a. * Itexpl seemed them to dance.

b. * Itexpl was approved them (by us).

The parallel ungrammaticality of all three sentences leads us to conclude that seems is deficient
in not being able to assign accusative case, similar to unaccusative verbs. (Recall that it is also
deficient in not licensing a thematic specifier position.) Thus, both there in (27) and them in (28)
don’t receive case. If matrix I◦ is the only case-assigning head in the matrix clause, only one
argument will be licensed by a matrix predicate with seem: the (raised) subject.
Since the complement-clause subject cannot get case within its own IP, it moves on via
the matrix Spec(VP) to the matrix Spec(IP), as shown in (29a). Here, it can finally get case from
finite I in the spec-head configuration. It is this movement of the subject out of the complement
clause in (29a) that we refer to as raising. For comparison, the structure of the finite complement
counterpart is shown in (29b); here, each of the two subjects gets nominative case from its own
finite I◦.5

(29) a. IP

DPi I′

there I◦ VP
[pst]
ti V′

V◦ IP
seem
ti I′

I◦ VP
to
ti V′

V◦ DP
be
a problem
Chapter 11: Subject control versus raising 407

b. IP

DPi I′

it I◦ VP
[pst]
ti V′

V◦ CP
seem
C′

C◦ IP
that
DPk I′

there I◦ VP
[pst]
tk V′

V◦ DP
was
a problem

More nonthematic subjects 11.4

In distinguishing between subject control and raising in this chapter, we have relied heavily on
the grammaticality or ungrammaticality of sentences containing expletive there. As it turns out,
expletive there is not the only nonthematic subject (= subject that is not associated with a the-
matic role). In this section, we present two further instances of nonthematic subjects: subject
idiom chunks and weather it.
Chapter 11: Subject control versus raising 408

11.4.1 Subject idiom chunks

In § 7.5.3, we introduced the notion of idiom chunks—phrases with interpretations that are non-
compositional (i.e., not made up out of the meanings of their parts). In order to be interpreted
idiomatically, an idiom must enter the structure as a constituent (since its interpretation is lexi-
cally stored as a unit, it must appear in the structure as a unit to receive that interpretation). For
our current purposes we use idioms not just that are V′ constituents, but which are entire VP
constituents, crucially containing a subject. In the idioms in (30) the relevant subject is under-
lined.

(30) a. The cat is out of the bag.

b. The fur will fly.
c. The jig is up.
d. The pot is calling the kettle black.
e. The shit hit the fan.

Idiom chunks share two important properties with expletive there for our current diagnos-
tic purposes. First, just as expletive there must be licensed as the specifier of a verb of existence,
the subjects in (30) have whatever idiomatic force they have only in connection with the rest
of the idiom, but not otherwise.6 In particular, the subject of the idiom chunk must start out as
the specifier of the verb in the idiom. For instance, neither cat in (30a) nor pot in (30d) have a
metaphorical sense of secret or hypocrite, respectively, in other syntactic contexts. So sentences
like those in (31) have only literal interpretations.

(31) a. The cat is safe with them.

(only literal meaning; can’t have the idiomatic meaning: ‘The secret is safe with
them.’)
b. # Your neighbor sounds like a real pot.
(literal meaning is semantically deviant; also can’t have the idiomatic meaning:
‘Your neighbor sounds like a real hypocrite.’)

Second, presumably because they are not interpreted literally, subject idiom chunks don’t
seem to refer or be associated with any thematic role, and so they can occupy the nonthematic
subject position of raising predicates. As a result of these two properties, contrasts as in (32) are
expected.

(32) a. # The cat agreed [ PRO to be out of the bag ].

b. [ The cat ]i seems [ t i to be out of the bag ].

(32a) is ruled out both on a literal and an idiomatic reading. Agree selects humans as subjects and
is therefore incompatible with the cat either as a literal or as an idiomatic (nonthematic) subject.
In addition, the cat isn’t licensed as an idiom chunk in the representation in (32a) because it is
never a specifier of the lower verb (be, the verb heading the rest of the idiom). By contrast, both
readings, and in particular the idiomatic one, are possible in (32b). This is expected, since the
Chapter 11: Subject control versus raising 409

matrix subject originates in Spec(VP) of the complement clause, forming a constituent with the
rest of the idiom.
Note that examples like (33) do not invalidate the diagnostic value of subject idiom chunks
in distinguishing between subject control and raising predicates.

(33) The cat wanted [CP PRO to be out of the bag ]. (only literal interpretation)

Here, the selectional restrictions that want imposes on its subject are less strict than in the case
of agree. Since the subject of want isn’t required to be human (but only to have a reasonably
well-developed nervous system), the sentence is grammatical, unlike (32a). However, unlike in
(32b), the matrix subject position isn’t nonthematic and the matrix subject doesn’t move out of
the lower clause, so the sentence has only a literal interpretation. This is why a parallel sentence
using an idiom with an inanimate subject as in (34) has no literal interpretation in the real world:
literal shit can’t want things.

(34) #The shit wanted [CP PRO to hit the fan. ]

Examples like this show us that want places selectional restrictions on its subject.

11.4.2 Weather it
The third type of nonthematic subject is weather it, the subject of verbs of precipitation.

(35) ✔ It is { hailing, pouring, raining, sleeting, snowing }.

As with subjects of idiom chunks and their predicates, the licensing relationship between weather
it and their predicates is mutual: not only is weather it licensed by weather verbs, but the weather
verbs are in turn themselves licensed by weather it, as shown in (36).

(36) * The { air, atmosphere, environment, precipitation, sky, weather } is { hailing, pouring,
raining, sleeting, snowing }.

Given the nonthematic character of weather it, contrasts as in (37) are expected.

(37) a. # It decided to rain at night.

b. It seems/appears to rain at night.

11.4.3 Summary
We have seen that expletive there is licensed as the subject of verbs of (coming into) existence.
In a similar way, subjects of idioms and their predicates stand in a mutual licensing relationship,
as does weather it with predicates denoting precipitation. Because of their special licensing re-
quirements, none of these subjects is licensed by subject control predicates. Conversely, subject
control predicates select humans as subjects, so that their selectional restrictions are not met
by nonthematic subjects. By contrast, raising predicates like seem and appear neither interfere
with the licensing of nonthematic subjects (which takes place in a lower clause) nor do they
Chapter 11: Subject control versus raising 410

impose selectional restrictions that nonthematic subjects cannot meet. It is precisely because
of their semantic deficiency or neutrality that they are able to act as grammatical catalysts, al-
lowing licensing relations that are normally confined to the same clause to extend across an IP
boundary.
As we have seen, the special properties of nonthematic subjects make them useful diagnos-
tics for distinguishing subject control predicates from raising predicates. The relevant judgment
patterns are summarized in Table 11.2; for completeness, we also include the judgments for man-
ner adverbs discussed in connection with promise.

Subject control Raising

Expletive there * ✔
Subject idiom chunk # (or only literal) ✔ (idiomatic or literal)
Weather it # (or metaphorical) ✔
It expletive in main clause * ✔

Table 11.2: Judgments of subject control and raising sentences with nonthematic subjects.

New Empirical Observations

▶ Control predicates select for an external argument (i.e., a subject).

▶ Raising predicates do not select for an external argument (i.e., a subject).

Components of the Theoretical Model

▶ PRO is the embedded subject in a control construction.

▶ Subjects in raising constructions raise (move) to the matrix clause from the embedded
clause.
▶ There exists nonthematic subject positions (EPP/Subject requirement), generally
filled by an expletive or a moved phrase.
▶
 Chapter 11: Subject control versus raising 411

Notes 11.5
1. It might occur to a careful reader that an alternative approach to the facts in (8) and (9) is possible, according to
which control sentences contain a single subject, which must simultaneously satisfy the selectional restrictions of
both the higher and the lower verbs. Regardless of whether such an approach might be worked out for English, we
do not adopt it, since it cannot be extended to subject control universally. In particular, the approach in question
fails for Icelandic.
In contrast to English (and most other languages), Icelandic has certain verbs whose subjects appear in some
non-nominative case (genitive, dative, or accusative), even in finite clauses. The analysis of these so-called ‘quirky
case’ subjects is beyond the scope of this textbook, but it is well established that they are true subjects (despite the
lack of subject-verb agreement) (see Zaenen, Maling, and Thraínsson 1985; Sigurðsson 1991, and the many references
therein). (i) gives examples of Icelandic finite clauses with an ordinary nominative subject and with a quirky case sub-
ject. The subjects are in boldface. Note that the underlined quantifiers agree in case with the subjects; this fact will
be important directly. (How exactly this case agreement is implemented is irrelevant for present purposes.)

(i) a. Ordinary nominative subject:

Strákarn-ir komust all-ir í skóla.
boys-def.nom got all-nom.pl.m in school
‘The boys all got to school.’ ( = Sigurðsson’s (6a))
b. ‘Quirky dative’ subject:
Strákarn-um leiddist öll-um í skóla.
boys-def.dat was.bored all-dat.pl.m in school
‘The boys were all bored in school.’ ( = Sigurðsson’s (6c))

(ii) shows that the clauses in (i) can be embedded under a subject control verb (here, vonast til ‘hope for’). As
in English, the subject of the embedded clauses is silent, but note that the quantifiers continue to exhibit the same
case that they did in (i).

(ii) a. Embedded ordinary subject:

Strákarn-ir vonast til að PRO komast all-ir í skóla
boys-def.nom hope for comp get all-nom.pl.m in school
‘The boys hope to all get to school.’ ( = Sigurðsson’s (8a))
b. Embedded quirky subject:
Strákarn-ir vonast til að PRO leiðast ekki öll-um í skóla
boys-def.nom hope for comp be.bored not all-dat.pl.m in school
‘The boys hope to all not be bored in school.’ ( = Sigurðsson’s (8c))

In particular, in (ii.b), the quantifier must appear in the dative. From this, we conclude that the silent subject of the
lower clause in (ii.b) is assigned quirky dative case in (ii.b), just as it is in the finite clause in (i.b). The fact that the
matrix and embedded subjects are each assigned a different case in (ii.b) provides conclusive evidence that control
constructions are indeed biclausal, since a single noun phrase cannot be assigned more than one case (even if it were
to satisfy more than one selectional restriction at the same time).

2. Let us point out that we have not addressed an important question—namely, how PRO gets case. In English, PRO
and overt noun phrases are in complementary distribution (at least almost perfectly so). In fact, the complementary
distribution is not perfect. There is a bit of overlap in English—for instance, in the subject position of gerunds.
 Chapter 11: Subject control versus raising 412

(i) a. ✔ [ PRO going out with them ] would bother me.

b. ✔ [ { Kim’s, Kim } going out with them ] would bother me.

In other words, the positions where PRO can appear are ones from which overt noun phrases are barred,
and vice versa. It has therefore been proposed that PRO receives a case unique to it—so-called null case—which is
◦
assigned by nonfinite I in the spec-head configuration. However, there is evidence from languages like Icelandic
(see Note 1) and German that PRO can be assigned the same case features as overt subjects are, which contradicts
the null case idea. We will not attempt to resolve the issue here, and we will ignore it in what follows. In many ways,
PRO is a special kind of element in our theory, though there is a large research program attempting to derive the
properties of PRO from more fundamental properties of the theory (Boeckx, Hornstein, and Nunes 2010, e.g.).

3. For simplicity, we ignore the verb seem’s optional experiencer argument (It seems to me that you’ve solved the problem),
since it has no effect on our conclusions.

4. Clear evidence that the specifier position at issue is the Spec(VP) associated with seem (and not, say, some higher
specifier position, such as Spec(IP)) comes from the grammaticality contrast in (i).

(i) a. They made [ it seem [ that the problem was hard ] ].

b. * They made [ [ that the problem was hard ] seem ].

5. We refrain from drawing tense lowering here to focus attention on the raising structures themselves: see § 12.2 for
discussion of tense lowering.

6. The licensing relation between subject idiom chunks and their predicates is actually even tighter than that between
expletive there and its licensers. Existential there must be licensed by verbs of (coming into) existence, but these verbs
can occur independently of existential there. In other words, the licensing relationship is only one-way. By contrast,
neither the subjects nor the predicates of idiomatic sentences can be interpreted idiomatically independently of each
other. So in this case, as also for weather it and predicates of precipitation, the licensing relationship is mutual.

Exercises and problems 11.6

Exercise 11.1: Explaining grammaticality patterns with raising predicates
A. (1) is grammatical, but both sentences in (2), with the same intended meaning, are com-
pletely ungrammatical. Why is that?

(1) It seems that Jackie has solved the problem.

(2) a. * It seems Jackie to have solved the problem.
b. * Jackie seems that has solved the problem.

B. Repeat (A) for (3) and (4).

(3) It seems that they like caviar.

(4) a. * There seems that they like caviar.
Chapter 11: Subject control versus raising 413

b. * They seem that they like caviar.

c. * Theyi seem that t i like caviar.
d. * Caviari seems that they like t i .

Exercise 11.2: Basic practice distinguishing raising and control A

A. Using the examples in (1)-(3) in Exercise 11.4 as a model, determine whether the underlined
predicates in (1) are subject control or subject raising predicates.

(1) a. They failed to be on time.

b. They aspire to graduate early.
c. They remembered to do the laundry.
d. They are hesitant to move.
e. They are destined to get the job.
f. They are about to hit the jackpot.

B. Build structures for the sentences in (1).

Exercise 11.3: Basic practice distinguishing raising and control B

Using the examples below as a model, determine whether the verbs in (4) are raising predicates,
subject control predicates, or neither. In each example below, the evidence takes the form of
grammaticality judgments about the example sentences, and the conclusions are annotated below
each example. For the purposes of this exercise, use only active verb forms.

(1) ✔ There chanced to be an opening

→ Conclusion: Chance is a raising verb.

(2) a. * There resolved to be a solution.

→ Conclusion:Resolve is not a raising verb.
b. ✔ They resolved to solve the problem.
→ Conclusion: Resolve is a subject control verb.

(3) a. * There is possible to be a solution.

→ Conclusion: Possible is not a raising adjective (despite the grammaticality of
It is possible that there is a solution.).
b. * They are possible to solve the problem.
→ Conclusion: Possible doesn’t allow a nonfinite complement, so it is not a sub-
ject control adjective either.

(4) agree, aspire, attempt, be, beg, cease, choose, claim, come, commence, continue, dare,
demand, deserve, desire, determine, elect, end up, endeavor, expect, fail, forget, happen,
have, hope, intend, look, mean, need, neglect, plan, pledge, prefer, presume, pretend, pro-
ceed, prove, purport, remember, request, start, strive, swear, tend, train, try, volunteer,
vow, wish, yearn
Chapter 11: Subject control versus raising 414

Exercise 11.4: Nonverbal raising and control

Subject control predicates and raising predicates can belong to other syntactic categories than V.
The predicates in (1) are adjectives, those in (2) are participles, and about in (3) is a preposition.
Repeat (11.3) for these predicates. It’s not always clear whether the participles are verbs or ad-
jectives. If in doubt, treat them as adjectives; the exact category is not crucial for the purposes of
the exercise.
Note: Subject control predicates and raising predicates that aren’t verbs need to be inte-
grated into the sentence using some form of the verb be. See Exercise 11.2, (1d)–(1f) for exam-
ples.

(1) afraid, anxious, apt, certain, content, eager, ecstatic, evident, fortunate, glad, happy, hes-
itant, liable, likely, lucky, possible, ready, reluctant, sorry, sure, unlikely
(2) bound, delighted, destined, determined, embarrassed, excited, fated, going, inclined, itch-
ing, jonesing, prepared, scared, (all) set, supposed, thrilled
(3) about

Exercise 11.5: Case in raising and control

A. What verb class does prove belong to in (1a) and in (1b)?

(1) a. They proved there to be an error in the calculation.

b. There proved to be an error in the calculation.

B. Which case does each instance of there get? How can you tell? What’s the case-assigning
head, and what’s the case assignment configuration?
C. Build the trees for both sentences in (1).

Exercise 11.6: Selectional restrictions in control and raising

A. As mentioned in the text, certain subject control predicates, like try, cannot take finite com-
plements. Provide evidence that in subject control sentences containing these predicates,
both the matrix predicate and the complement predicate impose their own selectional re-
strictions, thus motivating a biclausal analysis.
B. Explain the acceptability contrast in (1).

(1) a. The children seemed to learn Twi.

b. # The children seemed to { elapse, evaporate }.

C. Show that threaten is both a subject control verb and a raising verb.
Chapter 11: Subject control versus raising 415

Exercise 11.7: Comparing different kinds of A-movement

Superficially, raising looks quite different than ordinary subject movement, the simple passive,
and the passive of ECM verbs, but it shares properties with all three. Complete Table 11.3 to
better understand the similarities and the differences. By ‘local movement’ is meant movement
where the DP head of the movement chain doesn’t leave its IP.

Name Raising Passive of ECM Ordinary Simple passive

subject
movement
Tail of chain Spec(VP), low
Intermediate Spec(IP), low;
links (if any) Spec(VP), high
Head of chain Spec(IP), high
Case assigner Finite I
Case Spec-head
configuration
Local? No

Table 11.3: Case assignment in raising and other constructions

Problem 11.1: Control in indirect questions

English indirect questions can be finite, as in (1), or nonfinite, as in (2).

(1) a. ✔ They know who they should invite.

b. ✔ They know which topic they should talk about.
c. ✔ They know who should speak.
(2) a. ✔ They know who to invite.
b. ✔ They know which topic to talk about.
c. * They know who to speak.
A. Using what you’ve learned in this chapter, build structures for (2) that are as parallel as pos-
sible to those for (1a). For simplicity, build a full structure just for (2a) and only structures
for the indirect questions in (2b), (2c).
B. Why is (2c) ungrammatical?
Chapter 11: Subject control versus raising 416

Problem 11.2: Diagnosing control predicates

A. You have been asked to review an article for the linguistics journal Glossa by Professor
A.B.C. Gerneweis, who concludes on the basis of the contrast in (1) that volunteer is a
control verb. What is wrong with the argument?

(1) a. ✔ They volunteered to do the job.

b. * There volunteered to do the job.

B. In your review, you graciously provide the conclusive evidence that Professor Gerneweis
failed to provide.

Problem 11.3: Ambiguity in raising and control

A. The sentence in (1) is ambiguous. Explain, taking into account the facts in (2).

(1) They were determined to be U.S. citizens.

(2) a. ✔ They were very determined to be U.S. citizens.
b. ✔ They were determined to be U.S. citizens by the INS.
c. * They were very determined to be U.S. citizens by the INS.

B. Build the trees for the two interpretations of (1).

 12
The verb raising
parameter

Chapter outline
12.1 Verb raising: V moves to I in the syntax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 418
12.1.1 The future tense in French . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 418
12.1.2 The order of diagnostic adverbs and verbs in French . . . . . . . . . . . . 421
12.2 Tense lowering: I lowers to V in the morphology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 426
12.2.1 The order of diagnostic adverbs and verbs in English . . . . . . . . . . . . 426
12.2.2 Do-support in English . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 427
12.3 The loss of verb raising in Scandinavian . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 432
12.4 Differences in verb movement within a language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 435
12.5 Verb raising cross-linguistically . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 436
12.5.1 Verb raising with VSO word order . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 437
12.5.2 Verb raising in an agglutinative SVO language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 439
12.5.3 Verb raising and changes in word order . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 440
12.6 Adverbs: a side comment that is also the main point . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 442
12.7 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 445
12.8 Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 447
12.9 Exercises and problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 448

As we saw in Chapter 5, tense in English can be expressed in one of two ways. The future
tense is expressed by will, which precedes the verb and is a free morpheme; that is, it can be
separated from the verb and stand alone.

(1) a. * We watch will that show.

b. ✔ We will never watch that show.
c. Q: Will you watch that show?
A: ✔ Yes, we will.

By contrast, the past tense is expressed by a bound morpheme, ordinarily the suffix -ed, which
combines with the verb to form a morphologically complex word.1

(2) a. ✔ We watch-ed that show.

Chapter 12: The verb raising parameter 418

b. * We-ed never watch that show.

c. Q: Did you watch that show?
A: *Yes, we -ed.

This dual expression of tense is typical of the Germanic language family, to which English belongs.
In all of these languages, the future is expressed analytically (as two separate words), whereas
the past is mostly expressed synthetically (as a single morphologically complex word).2
Treating sentences as projections of I◦, as introduced in Chapter 5, provides a structural
locus for free tense morphemes and is therefore straightforwardly compatible with the analytic
expression of tense. The analogous semantic contribution of free and bound tense morphemes,
in both English and other languages, is a good reason to extend the IP analysis to sentences
with synthetic tense forms. But the extension does raise the question of how tense and the verb
combine to form a complex word when tense is expressed synthetically. Either in the syntax or
in the morphology, the tense features must be combined with the verb in order to be pronounced.
In this chapter, we present evidence that in some languages, the verb moves up to I◦ before the
structure is handed over to PF (where morphology determines its pronunciation), whereas in
other languages, the verb remains in situ (that is, it does not move). Instead, tense moves down
to the verb in the morphology itself. We will refer to the choice between V-to-I verb movement in
the syntax and I-to-V tense lowering in the morphology as the verb raising parameter. As we
will show, the parametric variation can be detected on the basis of the relative order of inflected
verbs and certain adverbs.3
In the remainder of the chapter, we first contrast verb raising in French with tense low-
ering in English. Our description of English also includes discussion of a closely related and
important topic in the grammar of the modern language: the do-support that is obligatory in
negated sentences (They don’t like okra vs. *They not like okra). We then briefly review the para-
metric variation attested in the modern Scandinavian languages and the loss of verb raising in all
but one of them, Icelandic.

Verb raising: V moves to I in the syntax 12.1

12.1.1 The future tense in French

In certain languages, the verb moves up to I◦ in the syntax. One such language is French, and
we begin our discussion of the verb raising parameter by considering the future tense in French,
which is formed by attaching suffixes to a verb’s infinitive form.
Chapter 12: The verb raising parameter 419

Future tense of chanter ‘sing’ Present tense of avoir ‘have’

je chanter-ai ‘I will sing’ j’ai ‘I have’
tu chanter-as ‘you.sg will sing’ tu as ‘you.sg have’
il, elle chanter-a ‘he, she will sing’ il, elle a ‘he, she has’
nous chanter-ons ‘we will sing’ nous avons ‘we will have’
vous chanter-ez ‘you.pl will sing’ vous avez ‘you.pl have’
ils, elles chanter-ont ‘they will sing’ ils, elles ont ‘they have’

Table 12.1: Future tense formation in French

As is evident from Table 12.1, the future tense affixes are nearly identical to the present
tense forms of the verb avoir ‘have’, the only difference being that the affixes are truncated in
the first and second person plural by comparison to the full two-syllable forms of avoir. This
correspondence suggests that the future tense in French developed via a semantic shift from
‘they have to V’ to ‘they will V’.4 In addition, and more immediately relevant for the present
discussion, the originally free forms of avoir were reanalyzed as bound morphemes.5 The analytic
roots of the synthetic French future tense thus indicate that the two ways of expressing tense
(analytic or synthetic) are not just semantically parallel, but that they are also morphologically
more closely related than might appear at first glance. Example (3) shows the elementary tree for
the French future suffix in the first-person plural, which ends up being spelled out as -ons in the
morphology.

(3) IP
»DP« I′

I◦ »VP«
[fut]
[1pl]

The morphology of French therefore must have a rule that looks something like (4), which says
that the combination of an I◦ with future tense and first plural features together is pronounced
as the -ons suffix when occuring on a regular verb.

(4) I◦ + [fut] + [1pl] ⟷ /-ons/ / verb

Given elementary trees like (3), sentences like (5) can be derived as follows.

(5) Nous chanter -ons une chanson.

we sing -fut.1pl a song
‘We will sing a song.’

We begin with the elementary tree for the verb chanter in (6a) and substitute it as the complement
of (3) to yield the structure in (6b).
Chapter 12: The verb raising parameter 420

(6) a. VP b. IP

»DP« V′ »DP« I′

V◦ »DP« I◦ VP
chanter- [fut]
[1pl] »DP« V′

V◦ »DP«
chanter-

Elementary tree for chanter Substitute (6a) in elementary tree (3)

The verb then moves to I′. Because I◦ is already filled, the verb cannot directly substitute in I′,
but must adjoin to it, as shown in (7). The head movement that we invoke here is exactly
the same formal operation that was introduced in Chapter 8, § 4 in connection with subject-aux
inversion.

(7) a. b.
IP IP

»DP« I′ »DP« I′

I◦ VP I◦ VP
[fut]
[1pl] »DP« V′ »DP« V′
V◦i I◦
chanter- [fut]
V◦ »DP« [1pl] V◦i »DP«
chanter-

Select I◦ as target of adjunction Left-adjoin V◦ to I◦

The remaining steps of the derivation, shown in (8), are identical to the ones that would be
required to derive the corresponding English sentence We will sing a song.
Chapter 12: The verb raising parameter 421

(8) a. IP
»DP« I′

I◦ VP

V◦i I◦ DP V′
chanter- [fut] nous V◦i DP
[1pl]
une chanson

Substitute subject and object

b. IP
DPk I′
nous I◦ VP

V◦i I◦ tk V′
chanter- [fut] V◦i DP
[1pl]
une chanson

Move subject

Finally, the structure in (8b) is handed over to the morphological component, where the
combination of chanter and the future tense affix is spelled out as chanterons according to the
morphological rule in (4).

12.1.2 The order of diagnostic adverbs and verbs in French

Extra Info
In reading the following section, bear in mind that our focus is not on the distribution
of adverbs in and of itself. In particular, we are not claiming that all, or even most, ad-
verbs left-adjoin to V′ in French; in fact, there are many that right-adjoin, and there are
many that adjoin to different syntactic positions (both in French, and cross-linguistically).
Rather, the idea is to use the particular subset of adverbs that must left-adjoin to V′ as a
diagnostic tool to determine the structural position of finite verbs in French.
Chapter 12: The verb raising parameter 422

The facts of French presented so far are consistent with a verb raising analysis, but do
not provide conclusive evidence in favor of it. In other words, nothing in what we have said
so far prevents the French verb from remaining in situ and not combining with tense until the
morphology. In this section, we present conclusive evidence in favor of the verb raising analysis
that is based on the order of verbs and certain diagnostic adverbs (Emonds 1978).
As illustrated in (9)–(11), there are certain adverbs in French (underlined) that ordinarily
precede the main verb of a sentence (in boldface), rather than follow it. (Strictly speaking, à peine
is a PP; what is relevant for the purposes of the argument is not its syntactic category, but rather
its syntactic distribution.) We have circled the auxiliary in each example below.

(9) a. ✔ Elle avait à peine travaillé trois heures.

she had hardly worked three hours
‘She had hardly worked three hours.’
b. ✔ Mon ami a complètement perdu la tête.
my friend has completely lost the head
‘My friend completely lost his head.’
c. ✔ J’ avais presque oublié mon nom.
I had almost forgotten my name
‘I had almost forgotten my name.’
(10) a. * Elle avait travaillé à peine trois heures.
b. * Mon ami a perdu complètement la tête.
c. * J’ avais oublié presque mon nom.
(11) a. * Elle avait travaillé trois heures à peine.
b. * Mon ami a perdu la tête complètement.
c. * J’ avais oublié mon nom presque.

Word of Caution
As highlighted by the grammaticality contrast in (i), constraints in adverb placement in
one language don’t necessarily carry over to their translation equivalents in another.
(i) a. * … perdu la tête complètement = (11b)
b. ✔ … lost one’s head completely

The negative adverb jamais ‘never’ and the simple negative marker pas ‘not’ behave alike in this
regard in French.6

(12) a. ✔ Les enfants d’ aujourd’hui (n’) ont jamais écouté la radio.

the children of today ne have never listened.to the radio
‘Today’s children have never listened to the radio.’
b. * Les enfants d’aujourd’hui (n’) ont écouté jamais la radio.
c. * Les enfants d’aujourd’hui (n’) ont écouté la radio jamais.
Chapter 12: The verb raising parameter 423

(13) a. ✔ Je (n’) ai pas fait la vaisselle.

I ne have not done the dishes
‘I haven’t done the dishes.’
b. * Je (n’) ai fait pas la vaisselle.
c. * Je (n’) ai fait la vaisselle pas.

The word order facts in (9)–(13) follow straightforwardly if the adverbs in question must
adjoin to the left of V′ , as shown schematically in (14), rather than to the right.

(14) VP

»DP« V′

AdvP V′

diagnostic adverb V◦ »DP«

nonfinite verb

But now consider an unexpected fact: when the main verb of the sentence is finite, the
obligatory adverb-verb order that we have just seen is ungrammatical.

(15) a. * Elle à peine travailler-a trois heures.

she hardly work-fut.3sg three hours
Intended meaning: ‘She will hardly work three hours.’
b. * Mon ami complètement perdr-a la tête.
my friend completely lose-fut.3sg the head
Intended meaning: ‘My friend will completely lose his head.’
c. * Je presque oublier-ai mon nom.
I almost forget-fut.1sg my name
Intended meaning: ‘I will almost forget my name.’
d. * Les enfants d’ aujourd’hui (ne) jamais écouter-ont la radio.
the children of today ne never listen.to-fut.3pl the radio
Intended meaning: ‘Today’s children will never listen to the radio.’
e. * Je (ne) pas fer-ai la vaisselle.
I ne not do-fut.1sg the dishes
Intended meaning: ‘I won’t do the dishes.’

Instead, the adverb must follow the verb, although it still cannot follow the entire V′ .

(16) a. ✔ Elle travaillera à peine trois heures.

b. ✔ Mon ami perdra complètement la tête.
c. ✔ J’oublierai presque mon nom.
d. ✔ Les enfants d’aujourd’hui (n’)écouteront jamais la radio.
e. ✔ Je (ne) ferai pas la vaisselle.
Chapter 12: The verb raising parameter 424

(17) a. * Elle travaillera trois heures à peine.

b. * Mon ami perdra la tête complètement.
c. * J’oublierai mon nom presque.
d. * Les enfants d’aujourd’hui (n’)écouteront la radio jamais.
e. * Je (ne) ferai la vaisselle pas.

Table 12.2 summarizes all the facts just presented.

Finiteness of main verb AdvP > verb … verb > AdvP … verb > XP > AdvP
nonfinite, as in (9)–(14) ✔ * *
finite, as in (15)–(17) * ✔ *

Table 12.2: Adverb placement in French by finiteness of main verb

As already noted, the adverb placement facts for nonfinite verbs in the first row are ex-
pected under the assumption that diagnostic adverbs obligatorily left-adjoin to V′ . This assump-
tion also explains the rightmost judgment for finite verbs (the blue star in the undecorated box
in the second row). The judgments highlighted in red dots, which are the opposite of their solid
green counterparts in the row above, are puzzling at first glance. But they too follow straightfor-
wardly if we assume that finite verbs obligatorily move to I in French, as in (18a).

(18) a. ✔ IP

subj I′

I◦ VP

V◦i I◦ subj V′
verb [tense]
AdvP V′

diagnostic adverb V◦i obj

verb

Verb raising yields finite V > Adv (grammatical in French)

Chapter 12: The verb raising parameter 425

b. * IP

subj I′

I◦ VP
[tense]
subj V′

AdvP V′

diagnostic adverb V◦i obj

verb

No verb raising yields Adv > finite V (ungrammatical in French)

If French did not require finite verbs to move to I, as in the hypothetical scenario represented in
(18b), it is difficult to see how the contrast between the solid green and the dotted red cells in
Table 12.2 could be derived in a principled way.
As (19)–(21) show, the adverb facts for other inflected verbs (simple tenses) are parallel to
those for the future tense (compare (15)–(17)), and it is therefore natural to extend the verb raising
analysis to them as well.

(19) a. * Elle à peine travaill-ait trois heures.

she hardly work-impf.3sg three hours
Intended meaning: ‘She used to hardly work three hours.’
b. * Mon ami complètement perd la tête.
my friend completely lose.pRs.3sg the head
Intended meaning: ‘My friend is completely losing his head.’
c. * Je presque oublie mon nom.
I almost forget-pRs.1sg my name
Intended meaning: ‘I am almost forgetting my name.’
d. * Les enfants (ne) jamais écout-aient la radio.
the children ne never listen.to-impf.3pl the radio
Intended meaning: ‘The children never listened to the radio.’
e. * Je (ne) pas fais la vaisselle.
I ne not do-pRs.1sg the dishes
Intended meaning: ‘I don’t do the dishes.’
(20) a. ✔ Elle travaillait à peine trois heures.
b. ✔ Mon ami perd complètement la tête.
c. ✔ J’oublie presque mon nom.
d. ✔ Les enfants d’aujourd’hui (n’)écoutaient jamais la radio.
e. ✔ Je (ne) fais pas la vaisselle.
(21) a. * Elle travaillait trois heures à peine.
Chapter 12: The verb raising parameter 426

b. * Mon ami perd la tête complètement.

c. * J’oublie mon nom presque.
d. * Les enfants d’aujourd’hui (n’)écoutaient la radio jamais.
e. * Je (ne) fais la vaisselle pas.

In concluding our discussion of French, we draw your attention to the fact that verb move-
ment, just like other instances of movement, allows us to accommodate mismatches between an
item’s expected position given its thematic or semantic relations and the position in which it is
pronounced. In the case at hand, assuming verb movement allows us to maintain a simple gener-
alization concerning these particular diagnostic adverbs (they obligatorily left-adjoin) regardless
of the finiteness of the verb they modify. Perhaps even more importantly, we can maintain—
regardless of verb finiteness or presence of adverbs—the idea encoded in the X′ schema that verbs
and their complements are siblings. Nonfinite verbs presents no difficulty in this regard. But even
in the case of finite verbs, where the verb-complement adjacency expected under sisterhood is
interrupted by an intervening adverb, the expected structural relation is preserved through the
trace of the verb.

Tense lowering: I lowers to V in the morphology 12.2

12.2.1 The order of diagnostic adverbs and verbs in English

Having established that French exhibits verb raising in the syntax, we now investigate the corre-
sponding English facts, using exactly the same tool that we used in French—namely, the position
of diagnostic adverbs. As in French, certain adverbs in English obligatorily precede nonfinite
verbs.

(22) a. They will { almost, hardly, never } fail.

b. They have { almost, hardly, never } failed.
(23) a. * They will fail { almost, hardly, never }.
b. * They have failed { almost, hardly, never }.

But unlike in French, these adverbs precede the main verb of a sentence even when the verb is
finite. The word order Adv > Verb in (24a) is grammatical: this word order was precisely what
was ungrammatical in French. In contrast, the word order Verb > Adv that was grammatical in
French is ungrammatical in English (24b).

(24) a. They { almost, hardly, never } failed.

b. * They failed { almost, hardly, never }.
Chapter 12: The verb raising parameter 427

The ungrammaticality of (24b) means that the verb raising analysis that is successful for French
is exactly wrong for English. Instead, English verbs always appear to be in the same position.
We can conclude that, in English, all verbs remain in situ in the syntax and any tense morphemes
lower and adjoin to V in the morphology. The input to the morphology is therefore (18b), repeated
here as (25), and the order of the adverb and the verb remains unchanged after tense lowering.
We mark tense lowering here with a squiggly arrow to help distinguish it from the other arrows
we have been using (solid for movement, dashed for Agree).

(25) IP

subj I′

I◦ VP
[tense]
subj V′

AdvP V′

diagnostic adverb V◦i obj

verb

Morphological tense lowering yields Adv > finite V

(grammatical in English regardless of finiteness of V)

This is the only lowering movement that we’ve seen or will see in this text, and (as we’ll discuss
below) it only happens in select instances. We can view it as a morphological fix that happens
after syntax (on the PF branch of the inverted Y in the Y-model).

12.2.2 Do-support in English

We now turn to an apparently idiosyncratic and quirky consequence of the fact that English lacks
verb raising—namely, the presence of the auxiliary do (do-support) that is necessary in sentences
negated with not. In order to highlight the conditions under which do-support takes place, we
will contrast sentences containing not with ones containing never.
In informal spoken English, never can function as a sentence negator equivalent to simple
‘not’, without its literal meaning of ‘not ever’.

(26) Q: Did you get a chance to talk to Tom last night?

A: Nope, I never got a chance.

But despite their functional equivalence in contexts like (26), not and never differ from each other
Chapter 12: The verb raising parameter 428

in a striking way: not obligatorily triggers do-support, whereas never doesn’t. (All forms of do in
this section are to be read without emphatic stress.)

(27) a. * They not applied.

b. ✔ They { did not, didn’t } apply.
(28) a. ✔ They never applied.
b. * They did never apply.

In order to explain this puzzling fact, we present an analysis of do-support that relies on two main
ideas: first, that never and not are integrated into the structure of English sentences in different
ways, and second, that tense (and syntactic heads more generally) can lower in the morphology,
though only under certain structural conditions.7

A syntactic difference between never and not

As shown in (29), never is intransitive and does not select for a phrase that is on the main spine
of the clause; therefore we will only ever find it as an adjunct in a sentence. Negation with not,
on the other hand, selects for a VP or an AuxP, implying that it does sit on the main spine of the
clause. We will show that this distinction is instructive about the properties of verbs and tense
in English.

(29) a. AdvP b. NegP

Adv′ Neg′

Adv◦ Neg◦ »VP/AuxP«

never not

We present two pieces of evidence for this distinction. The first comes from negative inversion.
(30a) shows an ordinary negative sentence, and (30b) shows its negative inversion counterpart,
where the negative constituent (in boldface) has moved to the beginning of the sentence, and
modal (in italics) precedes the subject (underlined). (We will give the structure for such a negative
inversion sentence shortly; for the moment, it is sufficient to understand that (30b) is structurally
analogous to the corresponding direct wh-question What would they accept more happily?)

(30) a. They would accept no present more happily.

b. No present would they accept more happily.

An important property of this construction is that the material preceding the modal must be a
maximal projection. Thus, while the full DP no present can precede would in (30b), its head, the
negative determiner no, cannot undergo negative inversion on its own—see (31).

(31) * No would they accept present more happily.

Bearing in mind this fact about negative inversion, consider the canonical and negative
inversion sentences in (32).
Chapter 12: The verb raising parameter 429

(32) a. They will never tolerate this mess.

b. Never will they tolerate this mess.

Example (33) gives the structures for (32a) and (32b), which has the same structure as the corre-
sponding wh-question When will they tolerate this mess? For present purposes, what is important
is that never is a maximal projection adjoined to the clause and therefore a suitable candidate for
negative inversion.

(33) a. IP

DPi I′

they I◦ VP
will
ti V′

AdvP V′

never V◦ DP
tolerate
this mess
b. CP

AdvPk C′

never C◦ IP

I◦m C◦ DPi I′
will [neg]
they I◦ VP
tm
ti V′

tk V′

V◦ DP
tolerate
this mess

Now consider the not variant of (32a) in (34).

(34) They will not tolerate this mess.

Under the reasonable assumption that I◦ can take either NegP or VP as complements, (34) has the
structure in (35).
Chapter 12: The verb raising parameter 430

(35) IP

DPi I′

they I◦ NegP
will
Neg′

Neg◦ VP
not
ti V′

V◦ DP
tolerate
this mess

In this structure, not on its own is not a maximal projection adjoined to the structure, and so not,
like no but unlike never, should not be able to undergo negative inversion. (NegP is of course a
maximal projection, but as it is on the main spine of the clause, it also contains the entire VP.)
This expectation is confirmed by the ungrammaticality of (36).

(36) * Not they will tolerate this mess.

A second piece of evidence for the status of not (and its variant n’t) as a transitive head
comes from the fact that it optionally adjoins to I◦, forming a complex head that can exhibit mor-
phological irregularities. For instance, n’t moves to combine with will and spells out the irreg-
ular form won’t. Moreover, various non-mainstream English varieties allow the combination of
n’t with various forms of the aspectual auxiliaries be and have to be spelled out as ain’t. Such
irregularity is the hallmark of two heads combining (whether in the syntax or in the morphol-
ogy).

A constraint on tense lowering in the morphology

We turn now to the second piece of our solution to the puzzle presented by the contrast between
(27) and (28), repeated here as (37) and (38).

(37) a. * They not applied.

b. ✔ They { did not, didn’t } apply.
(38) a. ✔ They never applied.
b. * They did never apply.

The idea is that tense lowering in the morphology is subject to the locality condition in
(39).

(39) When a head A lowers onto a head B in the morphology, A and B must be in a local
relation, in the sense that no projection of a head distinct from A and B intervenes on
the path of branches that connects A and B.
Chapter 12: The verb raising parameter 431

The notion of intervene is defined as in (40).8

(40) An element C, C distinct from (projections of) A and B, intervenes between A and B if
and only if (some projection of) A dominates C and (some projection of) C dominates B.

It is important to understand that intervention is defined not in terms of linear precedence,

but in terms of the structural relation ‘dominate’. This means that the place to look for whether
the locality condition in (39) is satisfied or violated is not the string of terminal nodes beginning
with A and ending with B, but the path of branches that connects A with B in the tree. A visual
clue to this kind of structural configuration is this: are all of the relevant heads (A,B,C) on the
main spine of the clause? If so, then C intervenes between A and B.
The structure for (38a) is given in (41). In this structure, tense lowering is consistent with
the locality condition in (39), since adjoining never at V′ results in the adverb head being too
embedded in the tree to intervene between I◦ and V◦ . (In other words, AdvP isn’t on the path
from I◦ to V◦ , indicated by the boxed nodes.)

(41) IP

DPk I′
they
I◦ VP
[pst]
tk V′

AdvP V′

never V◦
apply

By contrast, in the structure in (42a) tense-lowering would violate the locality condition
because the path between I◦ and V◦ is interrupted by NegP and Neg′ . As a result, only the do-
support variant of (42a) is grammatical, which is shown in (42b). It’s true that NegP and Neg′
intervene between I◦ and V◦ in (42b) as well, but forms of do are free morphemes. Therefore,
unlike tense affixes, they don’t need to undergo tense lowering onto V◦ to form a well-formed
morphological word. Since (39) is a constraint on tense lowering, not a constraint on syntactic
trees in general, (42b) does not violate it.
Chapter 12: The verb raising parameter 432

(42) a. IP b. IP

DPk I′ DPk I′

they they I◦ NegP

◦
I NegP did
[pst] Neg′
Neg′ Neg◦ VP
not
Neg◦ VP tk V′
not
V◦
tk V′ apply

V◦
apply

The loss of verb raising in Scandinavian 12.3

The modern Scandinavian languages are descendants of Old Norse (the language of the Vikings),
which split into two main branches with self-explanatory names: Mainland Scandinavian (Dan-
ish, Norwegian, Swedish) and Insular Scandinavian (Faroese, Icelandic). Old Norse had verb rais-
ing, something which is preserved in Icelandic, is in its very final stages in Faroese, and has been
lost in the standard variants of the Mainland Scandinavian languages. The examples in this sec-
tion are from or modeled after those in Holmberg and Platzack (1995) and Platzack (1988).
The Icelandic facts are illustrated in (43). As is usual with examples from non-English
Germanic languages, we give examples in the form of subordinate clauses in order to avoid com-
plications associated with aspects of main clause word order. As the examples show, Icelandic
patterns with French.

Extra Info
The Icelandic characters eth (capital Ð, lowercase ð) and thorn (capital Þ, lowercase þ)
represent the voiced and voiceless ‘th’ sounds in this, eth (IPA [ð]) and thin, thorn (IPA
[θ]), respectively. The Danish character ø and the Swedish character ö stand for the same
mid-front rounded vowel (IPA [ø]) (more or less like the vowel in ‘day’, except that the lips
are rounded as for ‘do’).
Chapter 12: The verb raising parameter 433

(43) Icelandic:
a. ✔ að Jón keypti { ekki, aldrei, raunverulega } bókina
that Jón bought not never actually book.def
‘that Jón { didn’t buy, never bought, actually bought } the book’
b. * að Jón { ekki, aldrei, raunverulega } keypti bókina

Examples (44) and (45) illustrate the corresponding facts for modern Danish and Swedish. As is
evident, the pattern is the converse of the Icelandic one.

(44) Danish:
a. * at Ulf købte { ikke, aldrig, faktisk } bogen
that Ulf bought not never actually book.def
Intended meaning: ‘that Ulf { didn’t buy, never bought, actually bought } the book’
b. ✔ at Ulf { ikke, aldrig, faktisk } købte bogen
(45) Swedish:
a. * att Ulf köpte { inte, aldrig, faktiskt } boken
that Ulf bought not never actually book.def
Intended meaning: ‘that Ulf { didn’t buy, never bought, actually bought } the book’
b. ✔ att Ulf { inte, aldrig, faktiskt } köpte boken

The loss of verb raising in the Mainland Scandinavian languages has been the subject of
detailed investigation (Falk 1993; Platzack 1988; Sundquist 2003). For instance, in Swedish, the
earliest examples of tense lowering are from the late 1400s. During a transitional period from
1500 to 1700, both verb raising and tense lowering are attested, sometimes even in the same text
(as in examples (46b) and (47b)).

(46) a. at Gudz ord kan ey vara j honom

that God’s word can not be in him
‘that God’s word cannot be in him’
b. när thet är ey stenoghth
when it is not stony
‘when it is not stony’
(47) a. om den dristigheten än skulle wara onågigtt uptagen
if that boldness yet would be amiss taken
‘if that boldness would yet be taken amiss’
b. om annar sywkdom ey krenker nokon
if another illness not ails someone
‘if someone isn’t afflicted with another illness’

Finally, after 1700, verb raising in Swedish dies out completely in the standardized variety. How-
ever, it is preserved in at least one regional dialect, that of Älvdalen.
Chapter 12: The verb raising parameter 434

(48) Älvdalen Swedish:

a. ✔ um du for int gar ita ia firi brado
if you get not done this before breakfast
‘if you don’t get this done before breakfast’
b. ✔ fast die uar int ieme
if they were not home
‘if they weren’t home’
c. ✔ ba fo dye at uir uildum int fy om
just because that we would not follow him
‘just because we wouldn’t follow him’

Faroese, spoken on the Faroes, a group of islands roughly midway between Iceland and
mainland Europe, is at the very tail end of losing verb raising (Heycock, Sorace, and Hansen 2010;
Heycock et al. 2011). Speakers do not ordinarily produce verb raising sentences, but when asked
to give grammaticality judgments, many speakers accept both word orders in (49), characterizing
the verb raising variant in (49a) as archaic.

(49) Faroese:
a. Verb raising (archaic):
Hann spur, hvi tad eru ikki fleiri tilikar samkomur.
he asks why there are not more such gatherings
‘He asks why there aren’t more such gatherings.’
b. Tense lowering (vernacular):
Hann spur, hvi tad ikki eru fleiri tilikar samkomur.

In concluding this section, we draw your attention to the absence of do-support in (44b),
(45b), and (47b). As the availability of negative inversion in (50a) shows,9 the translation coun-
terparts of not have a different status in Scandinavian than they do in English. They are ordinary
intransitive adverbs, and therefore tense lowering is possible in modern Mainland Scandinavian.
(Icelandic negative inversion in (50b) is shown for completeness; the verb would be able to move
up to I◦ even if negation were a head on the main spine of the clause.)

(50) a. Swedish:
Inte vet jag var hon bor.
not know I where she lives
‘I don’t know where she lives.’
b. Icelandic:
Ekki veit ég hvar hún býr.
not know I where she lives
Chapter 12: The verb raising parameter 435

Differences in verb movement within a language 12.4

Syntacticians often speak broadly about whether verbs raise (or not) in a given language, as
these properties do tend to typify languages as a whole. But even within languages there can
be differences between different kinds of verbal elements. English is an excellent example. As
we discussed above, main verbs in English do not raise to I◦ , which explains word order with the
relevant diagnostic adverbs. It also explains other patterns, such as do-support in questions.

(51) a. The children left.

b. Did the children leave?

As we discussed in Chapter 8, the subject-auxiliary inversion in English is explained via I-to-C

movement. When this happens in a past tense sentence, the past tense is realized with do-support
in C, leaving the main verb no longer inflected for tense.

(52) CP

C′

C◦ IP

I◦ C◦ DP I′
[pst] [q]
the children I◦ VP
[pst]
… leave …

We can assume here that the inflected do auxiliary is the morphological way of expressing past
tense in English when it is separated from a verb.
But not all verbs in English behave like this. (53) and (54) show that in questions, the
auxiliary verbs raise to C◦ , and do-support is unacceptable.

(53) a. The children were leaving.

b. Were the children leaving?
c. *Did the children be leaving?
(54) a. The children had left.
b. Had the children left?
c. *Did the children have left?

This suggests that when I-to-C movement occurs in English questions, the auxiliaries be and have
are in fact in I◦, and therefore move to C◦. This is of course the opposite pattern of lexical main
Chapter 12: The verb raising parameter 436

verbs in English, which don’t raise to I◦ and also don’t raise to C◦. The conclusion is that English
auxiliary verbs do raise to I◦ , but main verbs do not.

(55) a. Were the children leaving?

b. CP

C′

C◦ IP
[q]
DP I′

the children I◦ ProgP

[pst]
the children Prog′

Prog◦ VP
be
the children leaving

Verb raising cross-linguistically 12.5

As is true of the position of subjects cross-linguistically, the syntactic height of verbs is a major
point of cross-linguistic variation across languages. In the discussion above we focused on some
major European languages (English, French, Scandinavian varieties). In those instances, surface
word order appears to be quite similar between the languages at first glance, but we see important
differences emerge when we explore details of the positions of main verbs, auxiliaries, adverbs,
and negation. As it turns out, these lessons about verb raising are quickly generalizable to other
languages where the positions of major constituents of a sentence diverge significantly from what
we’ve seen above.
Chapter 12: The verb raising parameter 437

12.5.1 Verb raising with VSO word order

As we discussed in Chapter 7, a significant portion (though still a minority) of the world’s lan-
guages have a VSO basic word order. We repeat the examples here, which come from a wide va-
riety of unrelated languages: Niuean (Austronesian, Niue Island and New Zealand), Irish (Celtic,
Ireland), Turkana (Nilotic, Kenya) , Nandi (Nilotic, Kenya) and the Mayan languages Q’anjob’al
(Guatemala/Mexico) and Ch’ol (Mexico). In the following examples, the verb is bolded in red,
the subject italicized in green, and the object underlined in black.

(56) a. To lagomatai he ekekafo a ia. Niuean

fut help eRg doctor abs him
‘The doctor will help him.’ (Seiter 1980, 29)
b. D’oscail Seán an doras. Irish
open.pst Sean the door
‘Sean opened the door.’ (Guilfoyle 2000, 66)
c. ɛ-mɪn-a ŋesì ŋa-atuk’ Turkana
3-love-a he cows
‘He loves cows.’ (G. Dimmendaal 1983, 62)
d. ki:ri:p lɑ:kwɛ:t ɑrtɛ̂:t Nandi
watched child lamb
‘The child watched the lamb.’ (Creider and Creider 1983, 3)
e. Max y-il no’ tx’i’ naq Lwin. Q’anjob’al
pfv a3-see clf dog clf Pedro
‘The dog saw Pedro.’
(Baquiax Barreno et al. 2005, 169, via Clemens and Coon 2018, 240)
f. Tyi i-kuch-u aj-Maria jiñi si’. Ch’ol
pfv a3-carry-ss clf-Maria det wood
‘Maria carried the wood.’ (Clemens and Coon 2018, 240)

We suggested in Chapter 7 that V-to-I movement was responsible for VSO word order,
paired with the assumption that subjects remained lower in the structure than I◦ (presumably in
Spec,VP).

(57) Schematic derivation of VSO word order:

IP

I′

I◦ VP

subject V′

V◦ object
Chapter 12: The verb raising parameter 438

At the time this was introduced in Chapter 7, this head movement of V◦ moving to I◦ was
a novel proposal to deal with a very distinct word order. But this chapter shows that there is
nothing “exotic” about verb raising—it is a thoroughly mundane property of human language
syntax that occurs across a broad range of languages. In a language like French its presence is
often obscured by movement of subjects to Spec,IP. In languages like those in (56), however, the
lack of subject movement makes the position of the verb more salient.
In at least some VSO languages there are still constructions that illustrate the underlying
structure of the verb phrase, however. In Irish, for example, the canonical word order is VSO.
But some constructions have auxiliary forms that occupy I◦ , in which case we see the predicted
underlying order appear where subjects precede verbs.10

(58) Tá [ Séamas ag oscailt an dorais ]. Irish auxiliary construction

is James open.pRog the door-gen
‘James is opening the door.’ (Doyle 2001, 67)

Again, this is exactly what we expect to occur if VSO word order is generated by movement
of verbs to I◦ , rather than some other fundamental distinction in clause structure. One could
attempt to argue, for example, that word order in VSO languages is fundamentally different than
other languages: perhaps there is not X′ -syntax, or perhaps X′ -syntax is the wrong approach to
word order in human languages. We could think instead that Irish doesn’t have a verb phrase or
complex hierarchy of sentence constituents, something like (59):

(59) Sentence

Main Verb Subject Object

But this would not predict the shift in word order between main verbs and subjects that occurs
in examples like (58).
Likewise, there are constructions in Irish that are arguably small clauses, that is, instances
where a predicate selects for a truncated complement clause structure that arguably lacks I◦ :

(60) a. Tháinig siad abhaile agus [ iad ag amhrán ]. Irish small clause adjunct
came they home and them sing.pRog
‘They came home singing.’ (Doyle 2001, 67)
b. Chonaic me [ Máire ag rince ]. Irish small clause complement
saw I Mary dance.pRog
‘I saw Mary dancing.’ (Doyle 2001, 67)
c. Chuala sí [ Séamas ag oscailt an dorais ]. Irish small clause complement
heard she James open.pRog the door-gen
‘She heard James opening the door.’ (Doyle 2001, 68)

In these constructions, like in the auxiliary constructions above, we see subjects preceding main
verbs instead of following them. This is directly predicted by a verb raising account: in instances
where V◦ doesn’t raise to I◦ , we see a word order that is not VSO (either because I◦ is occupied by
some other element like an auxiliary, or because I◦ is not present, as in a small clause). Facts like
Chapter 12: The verb raising parameter 439

these are much harder to explain on an approach that assumes a lack of underlying structure, as
in (59).

12.5.2 Verb raising in an agglutinative SVO language

We see a similar kind of pattern arise in Tiriki, a Bantu language spoken in Western Kenya.
Tiriki’s canonical word order is SVO, and like other Bantu languages discussed in this volume, the
cardinal numbers in glosses represent noun classes (a form of grammatical gender). They show
you what is agreeing with what, but aside from that you can ignore them. Subject agreement
and tense morphemes are generally thought to arise on I◦ . This of course raises the important
question that we’ve been investigating in this chapter: does inflection lower onto the verb, or
does the verb raise to inflection?
In the examples below, we can see select adverbs (circled) that can appear at the right edge
of a transitive sentence, but can also appear intervening between the verb and its object. As
with the French patterns above, and with the VSO patterns above, a V-X-O word order raises
a fundamental puzzle for X′ -theoretic analyses of verb phrases (without additional theoretical
mechanisms like movement). If the verb and its object are siblings, and structures are binary
branching, how is it that it’s possible for XPs (subjects, adverbs) to intervene between the verb
and the object?

(61) a. Musa a-tuy-i mu-saala khavere

1Musa 1sm-hit-pst 3-tree twice
‘Moses hit the tree twice.’
b. Musa a-tuy-i khavere mu-saala
1Musa 1sm-hit-pst twice 3-tree
‘Moses hit the tree twice.’

(62) a. Amukotso a-tekh-i ma-kanda mwisaangaala

1Amukotso 1sm-cook-pst 6-beans in.happiness
‘Amukotso cooked beans happily.’
b. Amukotso a-tekh-i mwisaangaala ma-kanda
1Amukotso 1sm-cook-pst in.happiness 6-beans
‘Amukotso cooked beans happily.’

At this point, of course, this is non-mysterious. Tiriki must have verb raising like French
and like Irish. Assuming the adverb is adjoined to VP, a right-adjunction would result the ad-
verb assuming sentence-final position, while a left-adjunction results in the adverb preceding the
object. The V-Adv-Obj word order is then derived via V◦ raising to I◦ .
Chapter 12: The verb raising parameter 440

(63) Tiriki verb raising (S V Adv O word order)

IP

subject I′

I◦ VP

subject V′

AdvP V′

V◦ object

12.5.3 Verb raising and changes in word order

In some instances, significant differences in word order within a language can be attributed to
verb raising. We illustrate here from Vata, a Kru language spoken in Côte d’Ivoire. Simple sen-
tences like those in (64) could readily give the impression that Vata is an SVO language.11

(64) Vata (Koopman 1984, 27–28)

a. ń lé bɪ̌ sáka̋
I eat now rice
‘I am eating rice right now.’
b. ń lì sáka̋
I eat-pfv rice
‘I ate rice.’

In other constructions, however, the word order is noticeably different, instead looking
more like an object-verb language (more specifically, an SAuxOV language). Each of the examples
below use auxiliaries, either for tense/aspect or for negation.

(65) Vata (Koopman 1984, 28)

a. wá lā mɔ̋ dla̋
they aux.pfv him kill
‘They have killed him.’
b. ń ka̋ná gòlí mlɪ ̋ pùtū sà.
I aux.fut my mounds in grass remove
‘I will clear the weed from my mounds.’
(66) Vata (Koopman 1984, 31–32)
a. ɔ́ ɔ̋ gbā vātàwɪ̀.
s/he neg speak Vata-tongue
‘S/he does not speak Vata.’
Chapter 12: The verb raising parameter 441

b. à nɪ́-là sáka̋lì.
we aux.neg-yet rice eat
‘We have not yet eaten rice.

One approach to analyzing this pattern would be that the VP in Vata flip-flops between being
head initial (in examples like (64)) and being head-final (like the examples in (65)–(66)).

(67) a. VP b. VP

V′ V′

V◦ obj obj V◦

Hypothetical head-initial Hypothetical head-final Vata

Vata VP (not final) VP (not final)

We would then need to claim that I◦ without an auxiliary selects for the head-initial VP,
and auxiliaries select for the head-final VP. But such a connection is essentially arbitrary: our
model would just as easily allow auxiliaries to select for the head-initial VP.
A simpler approach is that Vata has verb-raising except for when an Aux is in I◦ ; that is,
we could assume that an auxiliary in I◦ blocks verb movement. This allows us to further assume
that VP in Vata is always head-final. When I◦ is not occupied, V-to-I movement produces SVO
word order. When I◦ is occupied by an Aux, V stays in place in the head-final VP, resulting in
Subj-Aux-O-V word order.

(68) a. IP b. IP

subj I′ subj I′

I◦ VP I◦ VP
aux
subj V′ subj V′

obj V◦ obj V◦

Vata S-Aux-O-V word order Vata SVO word order

(no verb movement, final) (V-to-I movement, final)
Chapter 12: The verb raising parameter 442

Adverbs: a side comment that is also the main point 12.6

The main point of this chapter is to demonstrate that there is variation across languages in the
structural height of verbs. In order to show this, we relied on particular kinds of adverbs that
were useful in diagnosing the differences between languages (and between structures within a
single language) with respect to the position of verbal elements. As we noted above, not just any
adverb will do: particular adverbs in each language were useful for diagnosing these verb move-
ment distinctions. Notably, the adverbs that are consistently useful for this task have roughly
equivalent translations (ex., often). Why? As it turns out, adverbs of shared semantics also share
a structure across the world’s languages. That is to say, adverbs appear in consistent positions in
a sentence based on their meaning.

(69) A summary of the proposed crosslinguistic adverb hierarchy:

discourse-oriented > evaluative > epistemic > subject-oriented (> Neg) > manner
(Ernst 2014, 109)

Discourse-oriented adverbs are speaker-oriented (like epistemic and evaluative adverbs)

because they provide a speaker’s assessment of the sentence they are uttering, particularly about
the act of saying the sentence itself. So in (70) the speaker is saying that the utterance itself is
frank, or brief, or honest.

(70) Discourse-oriented adverbs in English (Ernst 2014, 110)

a. Frankly, she would never be caught dead in an SUV.
b. Briefly, their solution was to tighten the frame and readjust the cylinder.
c. Honestly, why would the management try to do such a thing?

Other speaker-oriented adverbs like epistemic and evaluative adverbs also reflect a
speaker’s assessment of a sentence. But rather than commenting on the act itself of saying the
sentence, epistemic adverbs comment on the relative likelihood or evidence for a sentence, and
evaluative adverbs provide a speaker’s assessment of the information communicated in the sen-
tence.

(71) Epistemic and evaluative adverbs in English (Ernst 2014, 110)

a. Epistemic:
i. Modal: probably, certainly, possibly, maybe, definitely, necessarily, perhaps
ii. Evidential: obviously, clearly, evidently, allegedly
b. Evaluative: (un)fortunately, mysteriously, tragically, appropriately, significantly

Consistently cross-linguistically, discourse adverbs behave structurally higher than eval-

uative adverbs (72), and evaluative adverbs behave structurally higher than epistemic adverbs
(73).
Chapter 12: The verb raising parameter 443

(72) a. Frankly, Albert has unfortunately bought defective batteries.

b. *Unfortunately, Albert has frankly bought defective batteries.

(73) a. Albert unfortunately has probably/obviously bought defective batteries.

b. *Albert probably/obviously has unfortunately bought defective batteries.
(Ernst 2014, 110)

Epistemic and evaluative adverbs are generally thought to adjoin in the IP-domain.
We won’t walk through all the categories. Instead, we’ll just illustrate structurally low
adverbs: the manner adverbs that describe a subset of the activities described by a verb phrase
(roughly speaking, the manner that the event occurred in). That is to say, (74a) describes not all
the events where the orchestra plays the soft sections, but only the subset of those events where
the orchestra plays the soft sections loudly.

(74) a. This orchestra plays even the soft sections loudly.

b. The committee arranged all of our affairs appropriately.
c. She faced her fears bravely. (Ernst 2014, 111)

Manner adverbs are generally thought to adjoin in the VP domain, and are commonly referred to
as “low adverbials” for this reason.
A key finding is that it is far from only English or European languages that exhibit this hier-
archy of adverbials. In fact, the adverb hierarchy is stunningly well-attested across a broad range
of languages that are unrelated geographically, genetically, and with respect to their grammatical
properties. One example comes from Tiriki, a Bantu language spoken in Kenya. An epistemic
adverbial like haundi ‘perhaps/maybe’ appears at the beginning of a sentence (or between the
subject and the verb), as shown in (75). But manner adverbs are disallowed in this position,
appearing instead postverbally (76). The parenthesized checkmarks and asterisks show other
possible and impossible positions of the adverb.

(75) Tiriki epistemic adverb:

Haundi Injira (✔) a-la-sinza (*) i-chirishi (*)
maybe 1Injira 1sm-fut-slaughter 9-bull
‘Maybe Injira will slaughter a bull.’

(76) Tiriki manner adverb:

(*) Salano (*) a-chend-i (✔) hango mm-bwiivisi.
1Salano 1sm-walk-pst home in-secrecy
‘Salano walked home stealthily.’

Even languages which at first seem to challenge this generalization nonetheless end up
supporting it. An interesting finding in this respect is how in Malagasy, the order of adverbs we
describe above is inverted. This difference is evident in the difference between the manner and
frequency adverbs between the Malagasy example and its English translation in (77).
Chapter 12: The verb raising parameter 444

(77) Malagasy manner and frequency adverbs

Manasa tsara ny lambany foana i Ketaka.
wash well det clothes always det Ketaka
‘Ketaka always washes his clothes well.’ (Pearson 2000, 331)

But in fact, while the linear order appears reversed in (77), it is consistently reversed. In
other words, the relative order of the different classes of adverbs is (largely) maintained in Mala-
gasy, it just comes in the opposite order. In fact, in Malagasy the direct linear order is partially
replicated, and partially inverted. (79) shows a portion of Cinque’s (1999) proposed universal
adverb hierarchy, and (79) shows the adverb order that is observed in Malagasy.

(78) Italian adverb hierarchy (partial):

1 2 3 4 5 6
generalemente » già » più » sempre » complemente » bene
generally already anymore always completely well
(Cinque 1999)
(79) Malagasy adverb hierarchy:
1 2 6 5 4 3
matetika » efa » VERB » tsara » tanteraka » foana » intsony
generally already well completely always anymore
(Pearson 2000, 345)

This is clearly a different pattern from Italian/English/Tiriki, but suspiciously so: the postverbal
sequence of adverbs is directly inverted from the Italian ones. So while we can’t say that a specific
linear order of adverbs is universal, there is clearly something universal about the hierarchy in
general—even when it is not directly replicated, the hierarchy still seems to be asserting itself.12
An intro textbook is not the place for a complete discussion of the derivation of the adverb facts,
but the general idea is that adverbs attach in positions that match their semantics. So, manner
adverbs describe the manner in which the event described by a verb phrase occurs, and we find
them attaching at VP levels. Discourse adverbs describe a speaker’s stance towards an entire
sentence, so we find them attaching at the CP level. So while linear order itself is not univer-
sal (which is no surprise given when we’ve learned thus far about syntax), the core functional
hierarchy of a clause does appear to be universal, as presented in (80).

(80) CP

C′

C◦ IP

I′

I◦ VP
Chapter 12: The verb raising parameter 445

A hasty conclusion from the preceding discussion might be that verb-initial languages au-
tomatically invert the adverb order. But this is not the case, as in some instances verb-initial
languages appear to retain the (uninverted) adverb hierarchy. One illustration here comes from
Kipsigis, where manner adverbs appear at the right edge of the sentence, and epistemic adverbs
appear to their left, though still right of the verb. So while Malagasy adverb order inverts the
English expectations, Kipsigis has a similar adverb order to English (epistemic » manner).

(81) Kipsigis adverb positions (Bossi and Diercks 2019)

Koo-∅-jiiɑsi ɪnɛ lɑɑgook saanɪɪt kuʧoogi .
pst-3pl-break definitely children plate quickly
‘The children definitely broke the plate quickly.’

So despite both being verb-initial languages, Kipsigis and Malagasy have underlying differences
such that the word order of adverbs is inverted in Malagasy but is not in Kipsigis.
The takeaway lesson here is that there is a consistent hierarchy of adverbs across languages
that is consistent with the core functional hierarchy of the clause (roughly, CP > IP > VP). This
conclusion can feel like it comes out of nowhere: we often think of the “important” parts of the
grammar of a sentence as the predicate and arguments: is the language SVO? SOV? VSO? And
this is of course relevant, but when thinking about universal properties of human languages, the
order of verbs, objects, and subjects is in fact one of the more variable properties of languages. If
we’re looking for the most stability, it (perhaps ironically?) comes from optional elements in any
given sentence: adverbs and adverbial modifiers. Beyond being interesting on their own account,
adverbs are extraordinarily helpful to syntacticians precisely because they are so consistent in
their hierarchical structure. If we are attempting to diagnose the position of elements in the
syntax, adverbs are some of the most reliable elements that can help us do that. This is why
adverbs were so helpful for understanding the variable positions of verbs in different languages,
and why we needed to identify specific diagnostic adverbs in order to do that.

Conclusions 12.7
The conclusion of this chapter is that verbs are pronounced at positions of different structural
height in different languages. This is true in instances where the effects on word order are trans-
parent (comparing English SVO against Kipsigis VSO, for example). But even in languages like
French or Tiriki that share SVO word order with English, there are subtle but persistent differ-
ences in the positions of adverbs that are best explained by the proposal that verbs in French and
Tiriki (and in many other languages) raise up out of the VP to I◦ .
Notably, there is no clear theory-internal reason for why verbs move. That is to say, we have
provided clear and consistent empirical evidence that is well-analyzed by verb movement, but
nothing in our system explains from a conceptual perspective why verbs move. In our estimation,
Chapter 12: The verb raising parameter 446

the field has not yet arrived at any deeper explanation. For example, we might think that there
would be a crosslinguistic link where all verbs that move share some property P, and all verbs
that don’t move lack property P: this would suggest a deeper explanation for the movement.
But to our knowledge nobody has (as of yet) identified such a property. So instead the presence
or absence of verb movement at present has a status in our model not dissimilar to head-final
vs. head-initial phrases: UG does not place a requirement on either, but both are available, and
languages are free to evolve or devolve either pattern.
It is important to note that this conclusion does not abandon the existence of VPs: VPs still
exist, but verbs sometimes move out of them. Patterns like those in Irish and French demand this
conclusion, because there are certainly instances where verbs appear where we think I◦ would
be located, but some constructions in those same languages (ex., small clauses or auxiliary con-
structions) create conditions where the verb does not move, and we instead see a VP appearing
similarly to how we would expect based on how our model has been developed to this point. So
while VPs still exist, constituents can move out of them, obscuring their existence.

New Empirical Observations

▶ adverb positions are consistent crosslinguistically

▶ specific classes of adverbs can be used as diagnostic adverbs for verb positions
▶ verbs behave like they are in different positions in different languages
▶ in some languages, verbs are in different positions in different constructions

Components of the Theoretical Model

▶ head movement (via head-adjunction) is available for verbs

▶ verbs move to higher heads
▶ V-to-I movement is a common form of verb movement
▷ consistently in some languages
▷ variably in other languages (based on the particular construction)
▶ V-to-I movement can generate VSO word order, and can explain other kinds of word
order alternations
 Chapter 12: The verb raising parameter 447

Notes 12.8
1. In what follows, we focus on the past tense since the present tense is not overtly marked in English. The -s of the
third person singular expresses subject agreement rather than present tense (Kayne 1989).

2. Yiddish and the southern German dialects from which it developed are exceptions in this regard. In these languages,
the synthetic simple past has been completely replaced by the analytic present perfect (Middle High German ich
machte ‘I made’ > Yiddish ikh hob gemakht, lit. ‘I have made’).

3. It has been proposed that verb raising is correlated with the ‘strength’ of a language’s subject-verb agreement mor-
phology (the number of distinct person-number endings in the verbal paradigm for, say, the present tense). We do
not present this proposal here, as it is not clear that the correlation holds up under close scrutiny (J. Bobaljik 2002;
Heycock and Sundquist 2017; Heycock and Wallenberg 2013).

4. A comparable shift occurred in English from ‘they have to V’ to ‘they must V’. Such semantic shifts, with concomitant
changes in morphological status (see Note 5), are very common across languages.

5. Such reanalysis might be the source of much, if not all, inflectional morphology. In many cases, especially in lan-
guages that are not written, the sources of the inflections would be obscured by further linguistic changes, primarily
phonological reduction. Consider, for instance, the development of the future tense in Tok Pisin, an English-based
contact language that originated in the 1800s and that has become the national language of Papua New Guinea. In
current Tok Pisin, particularly among speakers who learn it as a first language, the future marker is the bound mor-
pheme b-. We are fortunate to have written records of Tok Pisin from the late 1800s, and so we happen to know that
this morpheme is the reflex of the adverb phrase by and by, which the earliest speakers of Tok Pisin used to express
future tense. The modern form of the marker developed via reduction (by and by > baimbai > bai > b-). Without
written records, the derivation of the modern form would be speculation at best.

6. Historically, the negative marker in French was ne, and jamais and pas (an intensifier literally meaning ‘step’) had
no negative force of their own. Modern English has comparable intensifiers, as in I don’t want to do it one bit, at all.
In the course of the history of French, ne, being phonologically weak, was often elided in speech, and jamais and pas
were reanalyzed as carrying negative force. In modern French, ne is characteristic of the formal language, and in
some spoken varieties, such as Montreal French, ne hardly ever occurs. In the present discussion, we disregard ne,
treating it as a semantically meaningless particle and glossing it as ne.

7. Do-support and the syntax of negation raises some thorny problems, and no completely satisfactory analysis of it
exists as yet. So although our analysis is adequate to explain the contrast between (27) and (28), it is not intended to
solve many other puzzles that have been discovered in connection with these phenomena.

8. A similarly-functioning definition could be written in terms of closest c-command instead of via domination.

9. For some reason, Danish ikke ‘not’ cannot invert, perhaps because it cannot bear prosodic stress.

10. Glossing for the Irish examples follows the style of McCloskey (1996).

11. We have adjusted some of the transcriptions from Koopman (1984) here, largely for readability. We have transcribed
the [−ATR] vowels using the typical current IPA symbols. We have also adjusted the notation of tones: we use a
double accent for high tones (á́), a single accent for mid-high tones (á), a simple overbar for mid tones (ā), and a grave
accent for low tones (à). Various glosses are also adjusted to the Leipzig glossing conventions.
 Chapter 12: The verb raising parameter 448

12. Pearson (2000) provides an intriguing explanation for how the hierarchy of adverbs gets inverted in Malagasy; the
interested reader is referred to that paper.

Exercises and problems 12.9

Exercise 12.1: Head-adjunction
We now have a variety of constructions that include head movement, or movement of the head of
a phrase to a c-commanding head of a phrase. This exercise will practice drawing out the precise
structure of what the result of head movement (i.e., head adjunction) looks like. We usually don’t
draw this full detail into a tree in order to keep things more visually simple, but this is an exercise
in working out the full details.
The questions below ask you to draw modifications of the tree in (1).

(1) CP

C′

C◦ IP

I′

I◦ VP

V′

V◦

Draw trees for the scenarios below, drawing in full detail the resulting structure of the
heads.
A. A construction based on (1) where V◦ moves to I◦ .
B. A construction based on (1) where I◦ moves to C◦ .
C. A construction based on (1) where V◦ moves to I◦ and then I◦ moves to C◦ .
Chapter 12: The verb raising parameter 449

Exercise 12.2: Tree-drawing practice, with attention to V positions A

As the chapter discusses, in English main verbs do not vary with respect to their position with
adverbs. We analyzed this as a result of English main verbs not undergoing any movement. But
the examples in (1) show that the progressive auxiliary be and the frequency adverbial always do
show different word orders with respect to each other.

(1) a. Children should always be having adventures.

b. Children are always having adventures.
A. Propose a position for always.
B. Propose an explanation for the difference in word order between always and progressive
be in the examples in (1).
C. Draw a tree for (1b).

Exercise 12.3: The position of English tense

A. Build a structure for (1). (Don’t build structures for the material in parentheses.)

(1) They didn’t only write the letter (but they sent it).

B. Now build a structure for (2), making sure that it is consistent with the locality constraint
on head movement from the chapter.

(2) They not only wrote the letter (but they sent it).

C. There turn out to be two structures for (2). They are topologically distinct, but there is no
semantic difference between them. What’s the difference between the structure that you
came up in (B) and the alternative?

Exercise 12.4: Japanese auxiliary constructions

Exercise written by Xiaoxing Yu
Examine the Japanese data below and answer the following questions.
A. Where is tense marked in each of these sentences?
B. Is there an analysis of these data that reasonably incorporates head-to-head movement? If
so, what is it?
C. Draw trees for (3) and (4). You may triangle over DPs and assume case- and topic-marking
particles are DP-internal.
Chapter 12: The verb raising parameter 450

Background Info

te is a suffix that connects a verb to following auxiliaries in Japanese; you do not have to
explain its presence. ben abbreviates ‘benefactive’, which means the action specified by
the main verb is done for someone’s benefit. cmpl abbreviates ‘completive’, which means
the event specified by the main verb is irreversible or done to completion (and in Japanese,
often also means it is regrettable). tRl abbreviates ‘trial’, which means the action specified
by the main verb is done just to try it out.

(1) お兄ちゃんが 弁当を 作った。

Onii-chan-ga bentō-o tsukut-ta.
big.brother-dim-nom boxed.lunch-acc make-pst
‘My big brother packed lunch.’
(2) お兄ちゃんが 弁当を 作って くれた。
Onii-chan-ga bentō-o tsukut-te kure-ta.
big.brother-dim-nom boxed.lunch-acc make-te aux.ben-pst
‘My big brother packed lunch for me.’
(3) みかんが 腐った。
Mikan-ga kusat-ta.
orange-nom rot-pst
‘The orange has gone bad.’
(4) みかんが 腐って しまった。
Mikan-ga kusat-te shimat-ta.
orange-nom rot-te aux.cmpl-pst
‘(Oh no,) the orange has completely gone bad.’
(5) 先週 納豆を はじめて 食べた。
Senshū nattō-o hajimete tabe-ta.
last.week fermented.soybeans-acc for.the.first.time eat-pst
‘I ate fermented soybeans for the first time last week.’
(6) 先週 納豆を はじめて 食べて みた。
Senshū nattō-o hajimete tabe-te mi-ta.
last.week fermented.soybeans-acc for.the.first.time eat-te aux.tRl-pst
‘I tried eating fermented soybeans for the first time last week.’

Exercise 12.5: English do-support in questions

A. The chapter discusses do-support in negative sentences. In Modern English, do-support is
also obligatory in the formation of direct questions from sentences with finite main verbs,
as shown in (1) and (2).

(1) They will apply. → ✔ Will they apply?

(2) a. They applied. → * Applied they?
b. They applied. → ✔ Did they apply?
Chapter 12: The verb raising parameter 451

Given the basic structure in (3), can you explain the contrast in (2)?

(3) CP

C′

C◦ IP
[q]
DPi I′

they I◦ VP
[pst]
ti V′

V◦
apply

B. Under what circumstances would the question in (2a) be grammatical?

C. Build the structure for (4).

(4) Won’t they apply?

Exercise 12.6: Shakespearean English: negation

Build structures for the following expressions from Shakespearean English. What is different be-
tween this variety of English (now extinct) and the contemporary Mainstream English discussed
in this chapter?

(1) a. They not edify mens’ eares.

b. We not fear to tempt your laughter.

Problem 12.1: English too

In both (1) and (2), the (a) examples are unambiguous, with an “also” reading associated with
the agent argument. The (b) examples are also unambiguous, with a “contrary to expectation”
reading. The (c) examples are structurally ambiguous between an “also” reading associated with
the activity and an “also” reading associated with the theme argument.

(1) a. They too will read the novel.

(They—in addition to an unspecified set of readers—will read the novel.)
b. They will too read the novel.
(Contrary to expectation, they will read the novel.)
c. They will read the novel too.
(They will—in addition to an unspecified set of activities—read the novel.)
(They will read—in addition to an unspecified set of readable things—the novel.)
Chapter 12: The verb raising parameter 452

(2) a. They too read the novel.

b. They did too read the novel.
c. They read the novel too.
A. Provide the two elementary trees for too required to account for the above facts. For clarity,
you can distinguish between tooalso and toocontrast .
B. How are the elementary trees from (A) integrated into larger structures?
C. Given your answers to (A) and (B), why doesn’t (2a) have a “contrary to expectation” read-
ing? (After all, too immediately precedes read in (2a) just as it does in (1b) and (2b).)
D. Given your answers to (A) and (B), why don’t (2a) or (2b) have an “also” reading associated
with the activity?

Problem 12.2: English emphasis movement and tense

Explain the facts in (1) and (2). Ignore the first conjunct and the conjunction and.

They said they would finish the project, and …

(1) ✔ finish the project they { will, did }.
(2) a. * { will, did } finish the project they.
b. * finished the project they.

Problem 12.3: Lopit word order

Data here are drawn from Moodie and Billington (2021).
Lopit is a Nilotic language spoken in South Sudan. The data below provide evidence for the basic
word order in Lopit including verbs, auxiliaries, and negation (negative auxiliaries).
A. Explain the canonical word order of Lopit based on the examples in (1) and draw a tree for
(1f) that represents an initial hypothesis about the underlying structure of Lopit declarative
sentences.
B. Explain the differences in word order with negative auxiliaries and other auxiliary verbal
elements, and draw a tree for (2b).
C. Explain what outstanding questions these data raise (if any) for your analysis.
Notes:
▶ You can take note of the inflection on verbal forms and it can factor into your outstanding
questions, but you don’t have to shape your whole analysis around it.
▶ Some glosses are simplified from the original source for the purposes of this assignment.
▶ Glossing notes: ipfv = imperfective aspect (an ongoing event); pfv = perfective aspect (a
completed event); nom = nominative case; abs = absolutive case; peR = persistive affix; agR
= agreement affix; sg = singular; pl = plural; q = question marker; seq = sequential marker;
sbo = subordinate marker; comp = complementizer; neg = negation
Chapter 12: The verb raising parameter 453

Lopit basic word order

(1) a. Ɛ-ɪ̀lːá xɔ́tːɔ́ɲɪ́ ɪ̀ŋɛ̂.
agR-wash.ipfv mother.nom baby.abs
‘The mother washes the baby.’ (256)
b. Ɛ-ŋɪ̂bá xàbʊ̀ ŋɔ̀ lɛ́ʔ.
agR-arrive.pfv chief.nom yesterday
‘The chief arrived yesterday.’
c. Ó-dótò móítéʔ.
agR-leave.ipfv morning
‘He leaves tomorrow.’
d. Á-lâ-dáxá náŋ ŋìɾìjà.
agR-peR-eat 1sg.nom food.abs
‘I’m still eating food.’
e. Ɔ́-xɔ́ɲ mùnù xɪ̀ŋɔ̀ xʊ̂.
agR-bite snake.nom dog.abs
‘The snake bit the dog.’
f. É-xì-rjè ɪ́ɲɛ́ mùnù.
agR-pfv-tread.on 3sg.nom snake.abs
‘He trod on a snake.’
g. É-jːò xítò.
agR-cry.ipfv child.nom
‘The child is crying.’

Lopit word order with negation/auxiliaries

(2) a. Á-wú náŋ à=tòrít.
agR-go 1sg.nom to=Torit
‘I’m going to Torit.’
b. Ìɲá náŋ l-á-wú à=tòrít.
neg 1sg.nom sbo-agR-go to=Torit
‘I’m not going to Torit.’
(3) a. A-íwús-ó náŋ ʃaì tò=kùbaìjà ìnːàŋ.
agR-drink-ipfv 1sg.nom tea.abs with=cup.abs this
‘I drink tea with this cup.’
b. Íɲà náŋ l-a-íwús-ò ʃaɪ̂.
not.be 1sg.nom sbo-agR-drink-ipfv tea.abs
‘I’m not drinking tea.’
(4) a. Á-ijːén náŋ xɪ̀ɟɔ̀ ò-lòt-ú ɪ́ɲɛ́.
agR-know 1sg.nom comp agR-go 3sg.nom
‘I know that he is coming.’
b. Á-ijːén náŋ xɪ̀ɟɔ̀ ɪ́ɲà ɪ́ɲɛ́ ò-lòt-ú.
agR-know 1sg.nom comp not.be 3sg.nom sbo-agR-go
‘I know that he is not coming.’
Chapter 12: The verb raising parameter 454

(5) a. … x-ɔ̀ -xɔ́ɲ mùnù ɪ̀ɲɛ̀ dɛ̂=xɛ̀ ɟʊ̀ k.

seq-agR-bite snake.nom 3sg.abs on=leg.abs
‘… and the snake bit him on the leg.’
b. … xɔ̀ ɟɔ́ mùnù x-ɔ̀ -xɔ́ɲ ɪ̀ɲɛ̀ dɛ̂=xɛ̀ ɟʊ̀ k.
and.then snake.nom seq-agR-bite 3sg.abs on=leg.abs
‘…and then the snake bit him on the leg.’

Problem 12.4: Lubukusu phrase structure and adverbs

Data and judgments from Aggrey Wasike
The data set below shows the possible (and impossible) syntactic positions of various ad-
verbs in Lubukusu. As noted in this chapter, we evaluated positions of constituents using partic-
ular ‘diagnostic adverbs’ because adverbs tend to adjoin to specific positions in the clause based
on their semantics. This problem set asks you to analyze Lubukusu phrase structure using these
adverbs.
1. There are two categories of adverbs that appear in the data below.
▶ What are the syntactic properties of these two categories?
▶ Each category of adverb shares a unifying semantic factor. Can you identify it?
2. What position do the adverbs adjoin to?
3. What are the syntactic positions of subjects and verbs in Lubukusu?
4. Draw trees for (4b) and (5a) (put triangles over all DPs, AdvPs, and PPs)

(1) sisangafu ‘happily’

a. Wafula a-tekh-ile ka-ma-kanda sisangafu
1Wafula 1sm-cook-pfv 6-6-beans happily
‘Wafula happily cooked beans.’
b. Wafula atekhile sisangafu kamakanda
1Wafula 1sm-cook-pfv happily 6-6-beans
‘Wafula happily cooked beans.’
c. * Wafula sisangafu atekhile kamakanda
1Wafula happily 1sm-cook-pfv 6-6-beans
‘Wafula happily cooked beans.’
d. * Sisangafu Wafula atekhile kamakanda
happily 1Wafula 1sm-cook-pfv 6-6-beans
‘Wafula happily cooked beans.’

(2) ekhabi endayi ‘fortunately’, ‘by good luck’

a. E-khabi e-ndayi Wafula a-ba a-tekh-ile ka-ma-kanda
9-luck 9-good 1Wafula 1sm.pst-be 1sm-cook-pfv 6-6-beans
‘Fortunately/by good luck Wafula had cooked beans.’
Chapter 12: The verb raising parameter 455

b. ⁇ Wafula ekhabi endayi aba atekhile kamakanda

1Wafula 9-luck 9-good 1sm.pst-be 1sm-cook-pfv 6-6-beans
‘Fortunately/by good luck Wafula had cooked beans.’
c. * Wafula aba atekhile ekhabi endayi kamakanda
1Wafula 1sm.pst-be 1sm-cook-pfv 9-luck 9-good 6-6-beans
‘Fortunately/by good luck Wafula had cooked beans.’
d. * Wafula aba atekhile kamakanda ekhabi endayi
1Wafula 1sm.pst-be 1sm-cook-pfv 6-6-beans 9-luck 9-good
‘Fortunately/by good luck Wafula had cooked beans.’

(3) wakana ‘perhaps’, ‘maybe’

a. Wakana Wafula a-lakat-a e-khafu
perhaps 1Wafula 1sm-will.slaughter-fv 9-cow
‘Perhaps/maybe Wafula will slaughter a cow.’
b. ? Wafula wakana a-lakat-a e-khafu
1Wafula perhaps 1sm-will.slaughter-fv 9-cow
‘Perhaps/maybe Wafula will slaughter a cow.’
c. ⁇ Wafula a-lakat-a wakana e-khafu
1Wafula 1sm-will.slaughter-fv perhaps 9-cow
‘Perhaps/maybe Wafula will slaughter a cow.’
d. ⁇ Wafula a-lakat-a e-khafu wakana
1Wafula 1sm-will.slaughter-fv 9-cow perhaps
‘Perhaps/maybe Wafula will slaughter a cow.’

(4) kalaa ‘slowly’

a. Ba-a-sakhulu ba-nywe-changa ka-ma-lwa kalaa
2-2-elder 2sm-drink-hab 6-6-beer slowly
‘Elders usually drink beer slowly.’
b. Ba-a-sakhulu ba-nywe-changa kalaa ka-ma-lwa
2-2-elder 2sm-drink-hab slowly 6-6-beer
‘Elders usually drink beer slowly.’
c. * Ba-a-sakhulu kalaa ba-nywe-changa ka-ma-lwa
2-2-elder slowly 2sm-drink-hab 6-6-beer
‘Elders usually drink beer slowly.’
d. * Kalaa ba-a-sakhulu ba-nywe-changa ka-ma-lwa
slowly 2-2-elder 2sm-drink-hab 6-6-beer
‘Elders usually drink beer slowly.’

(5) buung’ali ‘definitely’

a. Buung’ali Wekesa a-a-ly-a chii-ng’eeni.
definitely 1Wekesa 1sm-pst-eat-fv 10-fish
‘Wekesa definitely ate the fish.’
Chapter 12: The verb raising parameter 456

b. ? Wekesa buung’ali a-a-ly-a chii-ng’eeni.

1Wekesa definitely 1sm-pst-eat-fv 10-fish
‘Wekesa definitely ate the fish.’
c. ? Wekesa a-a-ly-a buung’ali chii-ng’eeni.
1Wekesa 1sm-pst-eat-fv definitely 10-fish
‘Wekesa definitely ate the fish.’
d. ? Wekesa a-a-ly-a chii-ng’eeni buung’ali .
1Wekesa 1sm-pst-eat-fv 10-fish definitely
‘Wekesa definitely ate the fish.’

(6) sifwi ‘stealthily’

a. Wafula ol-ile engo sifwi
1Wafula 1sm.arrive-pfv 16.home stealthily
‘Wafula arrived home stealthily.’
b. Wafula ol-ile sifwi engo
1Wafula 1sm.arrive-pfv stealthily 16.home
‘Wafula arrived home stealthily.’
c. * Wafula sifwi ol-ile engo
1Wafula stealthily 1sm.arrive-pfv 16.home
‘Wafula arrived home stealthily.’
d. * Sifwi Wafula ol-ile engo
stealthily 1Wafula 1sm.arrive-pfv 16.home
‘Wafula arrived home stealthily.’

Problem 12.5: Guébie word order

Data provided by Hannah Sande based on work with Sylvain Bodji and Agodio Badiba Olivier.
Guébie is a Kru language spoken in Côte d’Ivoire. Answer the following questions based on the
Guébie data provided below. Consider the questions in sequence, as they provide guidance to
ease the process of sorting through the data set.
1. What is the basic word order of Guébie with respect to subjects, verbs, objects, and auxil-
iaries? Are there alternative word orders? If so, what are they?
2. What kinds of morphosyntactic contexts affect the word order? What morphosyntactic
contexts do each kind of word order occur in?
3. Start with what you understand to the be the more straightforward cases. What analysis
of positions of verbs, subjects, and objects can explain these facts?
(a) Are there movements?
(b) When do the movements occur?
(c) What moves, and where does it move from/to?
4. For your analysis, give a short (1–3 sentences) statement of what the puzzle is, give a short
statement (2–4 sentences) of what analysis explains the puzzle, and draw trees of each of
Chapter 12: The verb raising parameter 457

the two sentences in example (6). (If being done as a class exercise, draw the trees, but
statements may only be thought out, not written out.)

Background Info

Abbreviations used:
sg = singular, pl = plural, iRR = irrealis, ipfv = imperfective, pfv = perfective, neg = negative,
pRog = progressive, gen = genitive, mdl = middle
Tone marking:
Tone is marked with a four-number system where the tonal marking follows the word.
Here 4 represents the highest tone and 1 the lowest. Contour tones are marked with two
tones within a syllable boundary, and syllable boundaries are marked with periods.

Extra Info
The information below is not needed for the exercise. It is provided for the curious
reader.
Ne is glossed as neg.pfv below, but new data collected after these examples were compiled
suggests it is solely a negative morpheme (neg) and does not expone tense or aspect. We
have elected to keep the original gloss here, but the interested reader is directed to Sande
(2022, 27).

(1) a. ɔ3 li3 dʒa31

3sg eat.ipfv coconuts
‘They.sg eat coconuts’
b. ɔ3 li3 dʒa31
3sg eat.pfv coconuts
‘They.sg ate coconuts (recently)’
(2) a. ɔ3 wa1 touri1.1.3
3sg like.ipfv Touri
‘They.sg like Touri’
b. ɔ13 touri1.1.3 wa2
3sg.neg Touri like
‘They.sg don’t like Touri.’
(3) a. ɔ3 ji3 dʒa31 li3
3sg will.ipfv coconuts eat
‘They.sg will eat coconuts’
b. e4 ji3 dʒa31 lilije2.2.1 kotʃi42.3
I will coconuts eat.pRog start
‘I will start eating coconuts (regularly)’
(4) a. * dʒa31 li3 ju4
coconuts eat.pfv boy
Intended: ‘A/The boy ate coconuts’
Chapter 12: The verb raising parameter 458

b. * touri1.1.3 wa2 ɔ13

Touri like 3sg.neg
Intended: ‘They.sg don’t like Touri.’
(5) a. kɔgʊlɪɲɔ4.2.2.2 pi3 saka3.3 (k)uɓə31
farmer cook.pfv rice yesterday
‘Yesterday a/the farmer cooked rice’

b. * (k)uɓə31 pi3 kɔgʊlɪɲɔ4.2.2.2 saka3.3

yesterday cook.pfv farmer rice
‘Yesterday a/the farmer cooked rice’
(6) a. ɟaci23.1 ji3 su-wa2.2 gbala2.4
Djatchi will tree-def climb
‘Djatchi will climb a tree.’
b. ɟaci23.1 gbala2.4 su-wa2.2
Djatchi climb.pfv tree-def
‘Djatchi climbed the tree.’
(7) a. ɟaci23.1 la3 touri1.1.3 jokuni2.3.3
Djatchi neg.pfv Touri visit
‘Djatchi has not visited Touri.’
b. ɔ3 ne4 a3 kubə4.21 jokuni2.3.3
3sg neg.pfv 1pl yesterday visit
‘They.sg did not come visit us yesterday.’
c. ɔ3 pja32 dibo2.1 ma1 ɔ3 ne4 u2 li3
3sg buy.pfv plantain but 3sg neg.pfv 3sg.obj.cl eat
‘They.sg bought a plantain but didn’t eat it.’
(8) a. * ɟaci23.1 ji3 la3 touri1.1.3 jokuni2.3.3
Djatchi will neg.pfv Touri visit
Intended: ‘Djatchi will not have visited Touri.’
b. * ɟaci23.1 la3 ji3 touri1.1.3 jokuni2.3.3
Djatchi neg.pfv will Touri visit
Intended: ‘Djatchi will not have visited Touri.’

Problem 12.6: English auxiliary structure

This is an exercise to arrive at a more complete understanding of the functional structure of the
clause in Mainstream U.S. English. Judgments are offered here based on the textbook authors’
grammars, but if your English grammar is different, you may answer the questions based on your
own grammar (just be sure to specify what judgments are different in your response).
A. What is the general structure of modals and auxiliaries in English? That is, what order do
they occur in? Where in a tree might you propose that these auxiliaries live? For now, set
aside the participle morphology on the main verb.
Chapter 12: The verb raising parameter 459

(1) a. Preston should run every day this week.

b. Preston should be running every day this week.
c. * Preston should is running every day.
d. Preston should have been running every day this week.
e. * Preston should been have running every day.
f. Preston has run every day this week.
g. Preston should have run every day this week.
h. * Preston should has run every day this week.

B. How can the distribution of tense morphology in the preceding examples and the following
examples be explained (in terms of syntactic structures)?

(2) a. Elena runs every day.

b. Elena is running every day.
c. Elena has run every day.
d. Elena has been running every day.
e. * Elena is have running every day.
f. * Elena been has running every day.

C. Given your analysis of the preceding data, how do you explain the patterns in (3a)–(3f)?
That is, why are multiple auxiliary-type-elements acceptable sometimes but not others?

(3) a. Ketanji could be running every day.

b. Ketanji could have run every day.
c. * Ketanji could had run every day.
d. * Ketanji has is running every day.
e. * Ketanji has was running every day.
f. * Ketanji can might run every day.

D. In the following data are a collection of yes/no questions. What basic movement operation
occurs in yes/no questions? Can the following data be explained given the analysis of
auxiliaries that you established above?

(4) a. Should Sonia run on her g. * Runs Sonia every day?

injured leg? h. Does Sonia run every
b. Should Sonia be running on morning?
her injured leg? i. Sonia ran every day last week.
c. * Should be Sonia running j. Did Sonia run this morning?
running on her injured leg? k. * Ran Sonia this morning?
d. Sonia is running right now. l. * Did Sonia ran this morning?
e. Is Sonia running right now? m. Sonia has run every day this
f. Sonia runs every day. week so far.
Chapter 12: The verb raising parameter 460

n. Sonia has been running all s. * Did Sonia should be running?

week.
o. Has Sonia run today? t. * Did Sonia should been have
running?
p. Has Sonia been running?
q. * Has been Sonia running? u. Should Sonia have been
r. * Been Sonia has running? running?

Problem 12.7: English main verbs vs. auxiliary verbs

This exercise extends Exercise 12.6. As in Exercise 12.6, the judgments offered here are based on
the textbook authors’ grammars, but if your English grammar is different, you may answer the
questions based on your own grammar (just be sure to specify what judgments are different in
your response).
A. Consider the following uses of have and be. What can you conclude about these structures,
based on the conclusions from Exercise 12.6?
▶ How is the possessive have the same/different than the have discussed in Exercise 12.6?
▶ What about the copula be? How is it the same or different than the be discussed in
Exercise 12.6?
▶ What kind of structure do you want to give to copular be?

(1) a. Jackson is a teacher.

b. Is Jackson a teacher?
c. * Does Jackson be a teacher? Mainstream U.S. English, to mean the same as (1b)
d. Jackson has a pencil.
e. * Has Jackson a pencil? in Mainstream U.S. English
f. Does Jackson have a pencil?
g. The fire hydrant is red.
h. Is the fire hydrant red?
i. * Does the fire hydrant be red?
j. The store has a purple door.
k. * Has the store a purple door? in Mainstream U.S. English
l. Does the store have a purple door?
Chapter 12: The verb raising parameter 461

Problem 12.8: VP pro-forms in English with do-support

A. Explain the grammaticality contrast in (2), assuming the judgments as given. If necessary,
invent a new syntactic category for so to belong to.

(1) A (challenging B): You’re lying; you didn’t go to the movies.

(2) a. B (responding to the challenge): I did so go to the movies.
b. B (responding to the challenge): * I so went to the movies.

B. Some speakers accept (2b) as a response to (1). How does the grammar of such speakers
differ from the grammar of speakers with the contrast in (2)?

Problem 12.9: English ellipsis

English, like many languages, has a process of ellipsis that eliminates a discourse-familiar con-
stituent from a sentence. We can assume that ellipsis is a PF process that leaves a discourse-
familiar syntactic constituent unpronounced. This means that a constituent exists in the syntax,
but is not pronounced. Each example is somewhat lengthy to create a viable ellipsis context, but
we have bracketed the sentence you are to analyse in each example.
Notably, ellipsis is not an instance of not mentioning something, but instead it is an in-
tentional silence that is specifically meaningful. In (1), the question can be answered in (1b), an
answer that has a specific meaning that native speakers know: it means “I will bring a bag lunch
today.” To represent this, we can also write out the unpronounced constituent, represented with
strikeout as in (1c).

(1) a. Q: Will you bring a bag lunch today?

b. A: [ I will. ]
c. A: [ I will bring a bag lunch today. ]

In this exercise we use the strikeout notation to make the unpronounced constituent clear.
A. First, based on (2) arrive at an analysis of what constituent is being elided in these data.
B. Draw a tree for (2c-ii). State (or annotate on your tree) which node is elided.
C. Second, consider the additional evidence in (3). These sentences are in past tense, and show
a slightly different pattern. Explain the difference with (2) and why it occurs.
D. Draw a tree for (3b-ii). State (or annotate on your tree) which node is elided.

(2) a. The children will read all afternoon, and [ I will read all afternoon, too ].
b. The guests might arrive this afternoon; I know that [ Preston definitely will arrive this
afternoon ].
c. i. Q: Should Khydence go home early today?
ii. A: [ She should go home early today ].

(3) a. I ate two breakfasts this morning, and [ my dog did eat two breakfasts this morning,
too ].
Chapter 12: The verb raising parameter 462

b. i. Person A: You ran an entire marathon⁈?

ii. Person B: Yup! [ I did run an entire marathon ].
c. i. Q: Did they prep the kitchen to cook dinner?
ii. A: [ They did prep the kitchen to cook dinner ].
 13
Decomposing VP and
CP

Chapter outline
13.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 464
13.2 Decomposing VP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 465
13.2.1 The causative alternation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 465
13.2.2 Applicatives as an introduction to ditransitive structure . . . . . . . . . . 467
13.2.3 Applicatives in English . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 469
13.2.4 Little vP in monotransitive sentences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 470
13.2.5 The decomposition of lexical ditransitives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 471
13.2.6 The status of UTAH . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 472
13.3 Additional evidence for decomposition of VP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 473
13.3.1 Decomposition of VP matches facts from idioms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 474
13.3.2 Decomposition of VP matches facts from adverbial modification . . . . . 475
13.4 Case in ditransitive sentences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 477
13.4.1 Licensing objects in transitives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 477
13.4.2 Licensing objects in ditransitives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 479
13.4.3 Licensing objects in unaccusatives/inchoatives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 480
13.5 Decomposing lexical ditransitive predicates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 481
13.6 Decomposing CP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 485
13.7 Conclusion: exploding projections everywhere? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 488
13.8 Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 490
13.9 Exercises and problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 492

The biggest storyline in this chapter is that we (finally) offer an explanation for ditransitive
verbs. The solution, crucially, includes complicating a structure (the verb phrase) which has to this
point been relatively uncomplicated for us. We will propose a decompositional approach, where
the structure that we used to call VP is in fact composed of additional, more specific projections
than just VP alone. We show how this decompositional approach quickly extends to a variety
of other properties of the verbal domain across languages. We conclude by showing that CP, in
addition to VP, is amendable to a similar kind of decomposition.
Chapter 13: Decomposing VP and CP 464

Introduction 13.1
The main lesson of this chapter is that some domains of the clause that we have been treating as
simple are not as simple as they have seemed up until now. The downside is that we have to adjust
our understanding of how human language syntax works (it counts as a downside only because
changing our minds about things is hard); the upside is that we can explain a much larger range
of empirical properties of human languages. Some of these empirical properties are problems
for our model that you may have noticed by now, and some will most likely be new to you. For
example, in Chapter 5, § 3.2.1, we mentioned the binary-branching hypothesis—the idea that
syntactic nodes have at most two children. At first glance, this hypothesis is threatened by the
(probably universal) existence of double object sentences in natural language, illustrated for
English in (1).
(1) Malia will give Langston the receipts.
In such sentences, the verb appears to be associated with three semantic arguments (agent,
Recipient, theme), and it looks like the Recipient (Langston) and the theme (the receipts) must
both be represented as complements of the verb. This is the view that underlies traditional gram-
matical terminology, where the verb is said to be ditransitive and to take two objects, the indirect
object (the Recipient) and the direct object (the theme). If objects of verbs are complements of
verbs (an assumption that has worked nicely for us), ditransitive predicates as in (1) would sug-
gest that verbs can have two complements. But the X′ schema only allows a single complement
of a verb.
(2) IP

DPk I′

Malia I◦ VP
will
tk V′

V◦ DP
DP give
the receipts
Langston
⁇?
Do ditransitive predicates break the binary-branching X′ schema? We will show here that
they do not. The answer that we will arrive at is that the X′ schema is still viable, but that there
is more structure inside the VP domain than we have been assuming.
We will start with an initial look at English that suggests we may need more structures
inside VP than we have originally assumed (§ 13.2). But we don’t fully explain English at first,
Chapter 13: Decomposing VP and CP 465

because there are other languages that demonstrate the relevant properties of ditransitives more
transparently: we discuss Swahili as an example in § 13.2.2, where a morpheme called an ap-
plicative is used to add objects to a verb. We show how this can be extended to English double
object constructions, and even to lexical ditransitives like give, which lack overt applicative mor-
phemes but nonetheless show parallel behavior. We then discuss the implications for UTAH and
the consistent positions of arguments of particular thematic roles.
This is the decompositional approach to the verb phrase: What we originally have treated
as a simplex unit (VP) is actually composed of multiple syntactic projections, so VP is decomposed
into a complex structure. Section 13.3 discusses additional evidence for this decompositional ap-
proach to the verb phrase domain, and § 13.4 discusses how DPs are case-licensed in this context,
as the new structures affect how we originally assigned case to objects.
Section 13.6 steps outside the verb phrase domain, instead looking at CP: the shared insight
is that, just like VP, a domain that we previously treated as a simple, single projection may in fact
be composed of more complex syntactic structure.

Decomposing VP 13.2

13.2.1 The causative alternation

English has a class of verbs expressing movement or other changes of state that are known as
inchoative verbs. These verbs are intransitive, and their subject is a theme argument. (In this
respect, inchoative verbs resemble the passive of ordinary verbs, but recall from Chapter 10 that
unlike passives, they are incompatible with an agentive by phrase.) Some examples are given in
(3) and (4); the theme argument is in boldface.

(3) a. The apple dropped.

b. The ball rolled (down the hill).
c. The boat sank.
(4) a. The water { boiled, froze }.
b. The butter melted.
c. The door opened.

Many (though not all) inchoative verbs also have a transitive use, where the subject is an
agent or cause initiating the change of state, and the theme argument appears in postverbal
position, as illustrated in (5) and (6).

(5) a. The children dropped the apple.

b. The children rolled the ball (down the hill).
Chapter 13: Decomposing VP and CP 466

c. The { explosion, sailors } sank the boat.

(6) a. The chemist { boiled, froze } the water.
b. The chef melted the butter.
c. The { janitor, wind, key } opened the door.

The alternation between the intransitive and transitive uses of these verbs is known as the
inchoative-causative alternation (or causative alternation for short).
The causative meaning of the transitive variants suggests giving them the same structure
as ordinary causative sentences like (7b).

(7) a. The apple dropped.

b. The children { let, made } the apple drop.

The structure for (7b) is given in (8a); the verbs expressing causation (let or make) take a small
clause complement headed by the intransitive inchoative verb. In (8b), the analog to let or make
is an abstract (= silent) verbal head [caus]. To distinguish this silent verbal head from typical
lexical verbs, we will adopt the standard convention and call it “little v” (v ◦ , which projects to
a vP). You may also notice that the theme object is in a slightly different position than we’ve
previously assumed: we’ll see the reasons for that below.

(8) a. vP b. vP

DP v′ DP v′

agent v◦ VP agent v◦ VP
{ let, make } [caus]
DP V′ DP V′

theme V◦ theme V◦
inchoative inchoative

The structural parallel in (8) captures the semantic parallel between (7a) and (7b), but the
word order is not yet right: in (7a), the verb precedes the theme. This is a garden-variety mismatch
between where an element is interpreted and where it is pronounced, and we solve it in the usual
way: with movement. Specifically, the inchoative verb head-moves and adjoins to the causative
verbal head, as shown in (9).
Chapter 13: Decomposing VP and CP 467

(9) vP

DP v′

agent v◦ VP

V◦i v◦ DP V′
inchoative [caus]
theme V◦i

The complex verbal head is spelled out as a homonym of the simple inchoative head. This suggests
that our conclusions about English verbs from Chapter 12 were too hasty; it is not that English
verbs do not move, but instead that English verbs don’t move past v ◦.
This discussion leaves some questions open: specifically, what happens with UTAH (as-
signment of thematic roles to uniform positions) when the theme argument is here in the spec-
ifier of VP, when previously we placed it in the complement of V◦ ? We will cover this below in
§ 13.2.6. The main lesson we want to take from this initial exploration of decomposing VP (break-
ing down VP into more specialized projections) is that our agentive subjects can reasonably be
analyzed as entering the structure higher than VP. Here, we assume vP is the projection where
agentive subjects join the verbal domain.

13.2.2 Applicatives as an introduction to ditransitive structure

A vast number of languages have overt derivational morphology on verbs that shows the differ-
ence between predicates with one object and predicates with multiple objects.1 The conclusions
that languages like this force us into ends up being informative to us in our analysis of ditransi-
tives cross-linguistically. Crucially here, the conclusion from above (that agentive subjects enter
the structure in vP) opens the door to a more expansive understanding of how other verbal ar-
guments enter the structure.
Applicatives are morphemes that add an object to a sentence. The most familiar sort of ap-
plicatives add what we often think of as an indirect object, a Recipient or a benefactive argu-
ment.2 Swahili is a Bantu language spoken across East Africa as a lingua franca. In the Swahili ex-
amples below, the applicative morpheme -e/-i in the (b) examples adds a Recipient/benefactive
argument to the sentence (the different vowel quality in the applicative morphemes is a result of
a vowel harmony process unrelated to our concerns here).

(10) a. Wa-zazi wa-li-som-a ki-tabu.

2-parents 2sm-pst-read-fv 7-book
‘The parents read a book.’
b. Wa-zazi wa-li-som -e -a Maisha ki-tabu.
2-parents 2sm-pst-read-appl-fv Maisha 7-book
‘The parents read Maisha a book.’
Chapter 13: Decomposing VP and CP 468

(11) a. M-pishi a-li-pik-a ch-akula ch-a asabuhi

1-cook 1sm-pst-cook-fv 7-food 7-of 9.morning
‘The chef cooked breakfast.’
b. M-pishi a-li-pik -i -a wa-toto ch-akula ch-a asabuhi
1-cook 1sm-pst-cook-appl-fv 2-children 7-food 7-of 9.morning
‘The chef cooked the children breakfast.’

Our approach thus far in this text generally assumes that when identifiable morphemes per-
form specific semantic functions, we give those morphemes a functional projection in the syntax.
In the story we have been developing thus far in this chapter, v ◦ is a functional projection that
introduces an agent argument to the sentence in its specifier. Here, we have a morpheme that
introduces a Recipient to the sentence. Extending the logic we’ve used above, we can assume
an applicative head (Appl◦ ) which introduces a Recipient/benefactive argument in its speci-
fier.

(12) vP

agent v′

v◦ ApplP
[caus]

benefactive Appl′

Appl◦ VP

V◦… theme …

Syntacticians working on Bantu languages assume head movement past v ◦ (and subjects move
to Spec,IP), with the result that the verb head picks up the applicative head/morpheme on the
way to its final landing position. Example (13) illustrates how this analysis works for the Swahili
double object construction in (10b).
Chapter 13: Decomposing VP and CP 469

(13) IP

DPk I′

wazazi I◦ vP
parents
wazazik v′

v◦ ApplP

DP Appl′

Maisha Appl◦ VP
-e-
V′

V◦ DP
-soma
read kitabu
book

We can see how a decompositional approach to the verb phrase can then be extended in
productive ways to account for valency-changing verbal morphology within the verb phrase:
morphemes that introduce changes to argument structure can readily be analyzed as heads with
their own projections, introducing their own arguments to the syntax. Part of what enables an
approach like this where a separate projection (ApplP) introduces the Recipient/benefactive ar-
gument is that the agentive subject is also introduced by a separate projection: where previously
we were attempting to put all arguments of a predicate into VP, by letting go of that assumption
we have space for all the arguments of a clause.

13.2.3 Applicatives in English

As you may have noticed, the Swahili applicative constructions may have unfamiliar morphology
to an English speaker, but the direct translations of the sentences into English are thoroughly
unproblematic.

(14) a. The parents read a book.

b. The parents read Maisha a book.
a. The chef will cook breakfast.
b. The chef will cook the children breakfast.
a. Her son will bake a birthday cake.
b. Her son will bake her a birthday cake.

In fact, quite like Swahili, English can readily add benefactive arguments to transitive sentences
to form ditransitive sentences. The only difference with Swahili in this respect is that there is no
Chapter 13: Decomposing VP and CP 470

overt verbal morpheme in English distinguishing those sentences. But we can adopt the same
approach that Swahili makes available to us: perhaps benefactive arguments are typically in-
troduced by ApplPs, even in languages lacking overt applicative morphology like English. This
would suggest that a sentence like (14b) would have a structure like (15).

(15) IP

DPk I′

the chef I◦ vP
[pst]
the chefk v′

v◦ ApplP

DP Appl′

the children Appl◦ VP

V′

V◦ DP
cook
breakfast

The applicative head allows us the benefit of assuming a stable argument structure for verbs
like read, cook, and bake: these are in fact typical transitive verbs taking an agent subject and
a theme object. The availability of an applicative structure is what allows for predicates that
are normally monotransitive (with a single object) to also at times occur with two objects in a
ditransitive construction. The only difference in this respect between Swahili and English, then,
is that Appl◦ does not have an overt morpheme in English, but it does in Swahili.

13.2.4 Little vP in monotransitive sentences

So what happens in simple monotransitive sentences, with only one object? We didn’t use little
v ◦ previously for those, do we need to do so now? If we want to maintain our stance thus far that
thematic roles are assigned to consistent positions in the syntax, the position of agent/cause
subjects in Spec,vP in the ditransitives above ought to also be the position of agent/cause sub-
jects in monotransitive sentences. So we will assume that little v ◦ is always present.

(16) a. The chef will cook breakfast.

Chapter 13: Decomposing VP and CP 471

b. IP

DPk I′

the chef I◦ vP
[will]
the chefk v′

v◦ VP

V′

V◦ DP
cook
breakfast

You may have noticed that the theme object is located in a different position for the analysis
of inchoatives above. We will be more specific about the position of theme objects below; for
now we simply want to point out that we will generalize the analysis of little v ◦ to claim that it
always introduces agentive subjects.

13.2.5 The decomposition of lexical ditransitives

There are various consequences of this approach. Specifically, what we once thought of as a
simple instance of a lexical item (a verb) is in fact a complex element, composed of multiple
pieces of syntax. So instead of just a single verb cook being a V◦ , in this section we’ve seen that
cook can either be v ◦ + V◦ , or v ◦ + Appl◦ + V◦ . It’s important that we don’t just say that the English
word cook is V◦ alone; on our approach here VP itself contains no agent, but English speakers
instinctively know that cook requires both an agent and a theme.
We will assume, therefore, that the lexical roots of verbs are represented as just that: roots
that are not yet fully verbs. We use the square root symbol to represent this.3

(17) a. The chef will cook breakfast.

b. vP
DP v′
the chef v◦ VP
[caus]
V′
V◦ DP
√
cooK
breakfast

English speakers’ knowledge of English must therefore include knowledge of how to pro-
Chapter 13: Decomposing VP and CP 472

nounce various combinations of syntactic structures and verb roots. This we’re actually famil-
iar with from Chapter 9. We know that the pronunciation of syntactic structures (phrases and
sentences) depends on what makes up those structures; previously, we saw this with different
case/agreement features resulting in different morphological forms being spelled out. As we did
before, we assume there are spellout rules that specify what combinations of features and syn-
tactic elements results in what pronounced form.

(18) Spellout rules for cook:

√
v ◦ + cooK ⟷ cook
√
v ◦ + Appl◦ + cooK ⟷ cook

Selected verbs in English require a ditransitive structure, that is, they are lexically specified as
being necessarily ditransitive. These lexical ditransitives can be explained if there is only a pro-
√
nunciation for the root give when it combines with an applicative; there is no monotransitive
(applicative-less) option like there is for cook in (18).

(19) Spellout rule for give:

√
v ◦ + Appl◦ + give ⟷ give

13.2.6 The status of UTAH

The Uniform Theta Assignment Hypothesis (UTAH) is the component of our model that ensures
that thematic roles are assigned to consistent positions in the syntax. Before this chapter, this
meant that subjects entered the syntax in Spec,VP and theme objects entered the syntax as siblings
of V◦ . The particulars of this have changed, however. Agent/cause subjects are now introduced
in Spec,vP; applicative projections now introduce Recipient/benefactive arguments. But we’re
faced with a conundrum for theme arguments: in the inchoative constructions we began with,
themes were necessarily introduced in Spec,VP, so that they would precede the main verb when
it remained in that position.

(20) a. The sun will [ make the popsicle melt ].

b. vP

DP v′

the sun v◦ VP
make
DP V′

the popsicle V◦
melt

This contrasts, however, with the complement-of-the-verb position we’ve been assuming gener-
ally is the position of themes. We won’t completely resolve this question in this textbook, but for
our purposes what appears to be the case is that VP introduces themes. VP has a special status
in syntactic structures as the only argument-introducing head that is a lexical projection and can
Chapter 13: Decomposing VP and CP 473

also sit at the bottom of the entire sentence. Because vP and ApplP are functional structure atop
VP, the only position they have for a new argument is their specifier; on the other hand, VP can
in principle introduce arguments in either its complement or its specifier. We will hence assume
that, having both of these positions available, VP can (in principle) introduce a theme argument
in either its complement position or in its specifier.

(21) UTAH illustrated (in a ditransitive)

vP

agent v′

v◦ ApplP
[caus]
benefactive Appl′

Appl◦ VP

(theme) V′

V◦ (theme)
√
Root

(22) UTAH illustrated (in a monotransitive)

vP
DP v′
agent v◦ VP
[caus]
(theme) V′
V◦ (theme)
√
Root

Additional evidence for decomposition of VP 13.3

We have already seen overt morphological evidence from Swahili suggesting a decompositional
approach to the verb phrase domain: some languages have overt morphology for adding argu-
ments to verbs phrases. However, English also suggests that this decompositional approach is
valuable. We show two arguments here.
Chapter 13: Decomposing VP and CP 474

13.3.1 Decomposition of VP matches facts from idioms

Recall from our discussions in Chapter 7 that idioms are expressions whose meaning does not
follow straightforwardly from the individual parts, as in (23). (The idiomatic meaning can some-
times be traced back to an etymological source, but even if that is possible, the source is often
unknown to most of the idiom’s users.)

(23) a. red tape ‘bureaucratic difficulties’

b. the Big Apple ‘New York City’
c. kick the bucket ‘die’
d. let the chips fall where they may ‘disregard the consequences of one’s actions’

As we’ve discussed previously (see Chapter 7 and 11), idioms have idiosyncratic meanings based
on their parts, and therefore must be memorized (lexical) knowledge. A result of this line of
thinking is that idioms are pre-established chunks of syntax, which in our model we take to be
constituents. The examples in (23) trivially satisfy this constraint: red tape is an NP, the Big Apple
is a DP, and kick the bucket and let the chips fall where they may are instances of V′ .
Section 7.4.3 of Chapter 7 discusses the conclusion that idioms necessarily enter the syntax
as a unit, as a constituent. The motivation for this is to account for the absence of theoretically
possible idioms like the made-up example in (24), where blue and hopping, though adjacent, don’t
form a constituent.

(24) a. They’ve bred a strain of blue hopping drosophila.

Intended meaning: ‘They’ve bred a strain of drosophila that is unusually large.’
b. The great apes all have blue hopping brains.
Intended meaning: ‘The great apes all have unusually large brains.’
c. She’s a blue hopping child for her age.
Intended meaning: ‘She’s an unusually large child for her age.’

This conclusion, as a baseline, would seem to suggest that idioms consisting of discontin-
uous chunks should not exist. But at first glance that appears to be contradicted by idioms like
those in (25).

(25) a. give someone the creeps ‘make someone uneasy’

b. throw someone to the wolves ‘sacrifice someone’

The way that we dealt with this previously was to suggest that idioms may start as a unit
in the syntax, but movement may obscure that. This is how we explained why the idiomatic
verb phrase the shit hit the fan in (26) can appear discontinuous, with an intervening inflectional
element in each example in (27).

(26) The shit hit the fan.

Figurative interpretation: There is suddenly a lot of trouble, or a serious argument.

(27) a. The shit will hit the fan.

Chapter 13: Decomposing VP and CP 475

b. The shit might hit the fan.

c. The shit could hit the fan.
d. The shit hit the fan.
e. The shit could have been hitting the fan, for all we knew.

We can apply a similar line of reasoning to the apparently discontinuous idioms in (25).
Just as the decompositional analysis of the verb phrase domain allows us to preserve the binary-
branching hypothesis in the face of prima facie counterevidence, it also allows us to preserve
the locality constraint on idioms in the face of apparently discontinuous idioms. This is because
the complex vP/VP analysis allows us to say that what is idiomatic in (25) are the underlined
instances of V′ in (28).
√
(28) a. [caus] someone … [ give ] the creeps
√
b. [caus] someone [ thRow ] to the wolves

This evidence suggests that there is a level of representation (pre-movement) where the V◦
and the direct object are a constituent to the exclusion of the indirect object. This constituency
does not hold up after movement, of course, but given that it is the case pre-movement, the
structure allows for these kinds of idioms that are constituents underlyingly but are discontinuous
on the surface.

13.3.2 Decomposition of VP matches facts from adverbial

modification
We can see a similar argument emerge from modification of verb phrases with the adverbial again
(Dowty 1979; Stechow 1995). Example (29) gives an example where there is ambiguity as to the
meaning of again:

(29) Malia opened the door again.

a. Repetitive reading: Malia has opened the door twice.
b. Restitutive reading: Malia only opened the door once, but the door was previously
open (perhaps the wind blew it shut, or some other person closed it).

The ambiguity here lies in whether the agentive action is considered to have happened again or
not. On the repetitive reading, the agentive action by Malia happened at least twice (with the
result of the action—the door being open—happening twice as well). The second reading is one
where Malia’s action only happened once, but the result itself is what may be recurring here
(the door’s open state), which we can call the restitutive reading (the door being restored to its
previous state).
Our approach to modification via adjuncts to this point would suggest that different read-
ings are the result of different attachment points of the adjunct. But a simplex VP structure like
we have used up until this chapter would give us no option for structural difference between
these readings.
Chapter 13: Decomposing VP and CP 476

On the other hand, if we have complex vP structures where the cause/agent is introduced
in a separate projection from the theme, there is a natural explanation for the ambiguity of again:
it is a structural ambiguity based on different attachment sites for the adjunct.

(30) a. b.
vP vP

DP v′ DP v′

Malia v◦ VP Malia v′ AdvP

[caus]
V′ v◦ VP again
[caus]
V′ AdvP V′

V◦ DP again V◦ DP
√ √
open open
the door the door

Restitutive reading of again: the Repetitive reading of again: Malia

door is open multiple times, but acted multiple times to open the
Malia acted once door

The ambiguity of again in (29) finds a natural explanation as a structural ambiguity in a decom-
posed vP: repetitive readings are instances where again modifies vP, and restitutive readings are
those where again is adjoined to VP.
There is always a cost and a benefit to any justified adjustment to a scientific model. Here,
the cost is complexity. All other things being equal, a simpler analysis (a simpler model) is the
better model—this is the famous Occam’s Razor. But here we are showing that all other things
are not equal. First, a simplex binary-branching VP always had no explanation for ditransitive
predicates, despite ditransitive predicates being normal in human language. But as we are show-
ing, this approach also has promise to explain other intersecting properties of language, such
as inchoative/causative alternations, apparently discontinuous idioms, and repetitive/restitutive
readings of again. So syntacticians have concluded that complex verb phrases are in fact justi-
fied.
Chapter 13: Decomposing VP and CP 477

Case in ditransitive sentences 13.4

Recall from Chapter 9 that we use the concept of (abstract) Case licensing to explain the distri-
bution of noun phrases in sentences: different kinds of syntactic constructions (and, different
languages!) prefer their DPs in different positions, and abstract Case licensing is how we en-
code/explain this in our model.

(31) DP Licensing Requirement:

All DP arguments must receive a Case value.

Previously, we said that I◦ assigns nominative Case to subjects, that (crucially for our cur-
rent discussion) V◦ assigns accusative case to objects, and that both do so via the Agree opera-
tion.

(32) The Chapter 9 story for case in VP

VP

DP V′

subject V◦ DP[𝜑: 3Rd,sg ]

[𝜑: 3Rd,sg]
object

This chapter raises multiple questions. First, we now have structures that can accommodate
ditransitive verbs. But how are Recipient/benefactive arguments Case-licensed? Second, we
have complicated our structure of the verb phrase generally, which will allow us another way
to explain Case-licensing even in non-ditransitive contexts. Throughout this section we will use
passive sentences as a diagnostic to facilitate the discussion.

13.4.1 Licensing objects in transitives

We are currently equipped to tackle a fundamental property of passive verbs: the connection
between suppressing an agent and losing the ability to license accusative case on an object. Ex-
amples (33c) and (33d) attempt constructions that don’t promote the theme to subject position,
and both are ungrammatical.

(33) a. The children popped the balloons.

b. The balloons were popped.
c. * Were popped the balloons.
d. * It was popped the balloons.
Chapter 13: Decomposing VP and CP 478

Originally noted by Luigi Burzio, this was known as Burzio’s generalization: verbs that
do not assign an external thematic role do not license case on an object.4 We can capture this
straightforwardly by placing the case-licensing features for objects on the same head that intro-
duces the external thematic role: v ◦ . If we assume that v ◦ bears a 𝜑-probe and undergoes an
Agree operation with a 𝜑-bearing DP in its c-command domain, we can likewise assume that the
case feature on the DP is licensed by that same Agree operation, parallel to how Agree with I◦
licenses subjects.

(34) Active vP
vP

agent v′

v◦ VP
[𝜑: ]
VP

V◦ DP

theme

What happens, then, in a passive sentence? The fundamental difference between a passive and an
active sentence can be represented by assuming passives and actives use different v ◦ heads. We’ll
label the passive v ◦ as [pass], and it does not bear a 𝜑-probe and it does not assign a thematic role
to its specifier.

(35) Passive vP
vP

v′

v◦ VP
[pass]
VP

V◦ DP

theme

So how does the theme argument get licensed in a passive sentence? The vP itself doesn’t
contain the resources to do so. But as we know in passives like (33b), the theme in these instances
becomes the subject of the sentence. Therefore, as we discussed in Chapter 9, in passive sentences
the theme argument (underlyingly the complement of the verb) becomes the subject. In English,
this means that it raises to Spec,IP after agreeing with I◦, receiving nominative case from I◦.
Chapter 13: Decomposing VP and CP 479

(36) IP

DP I′

theme I◦ vP
[𝜑: ]
v′

v◦ VP
[pass]
VP

V◦ DP

theme

In this tree we keep things abstract, ignoring the presence of an auxiliary in English passives
(many languages have no auxiliary verb in their passive constructions; this is a quirk of Eng-
lish).
This account of object licensing does several things for us. It provides a straightforward
link between external (agentive) thematic roles and object case licensing (Burzio’s generalization),
accounting straightforwardly for passives. It also takes the role of object case licensing away from
lexical verbs, which is desirable because (as we see with passives) the structural case licensing
of objects can vary with the same lexical verb, based on the kind of syntactic construction. An
account with a case-licensing 𝜑-probe on v ◦ accounts for this.

13.4.2 Licensing objects in ditransitives

We have now incorporated ditransitive constructions into our model via Applicative heads. This
is largely motivated by languages that have overt applicative morphology on verbs in double
object constructions (like Swahili), but the same theoretical components can be utilized in a lan-
guage like English. A key of a ditransitive construction is that an additional thematic role is
introduced (typically a Recipient/benefactive), and likewise the construction can also struc-
turally license an additional object. We assume that the Appl◦ head accomplishes both of these.
As is typical, the agentive subject introduced by v ◦ is licensed by I◦ . The 𝜑-probe on v ◦ probes and
finds the most local DP, in this instance the Recipient object. The theme object is now licensed
structurally by the 𝜑-probe on Appl◦ .
Chapter 13: Decomposing VP and CP 480

(37) Ditransitive (active) vP

vP

agent v′

v◦ ApplP
[𝜑: ]
DP Appl′

Recipient Appl◦ VP
[𝜑: ]
V′

V◦ DP

theme

This does make predictions, of course: in a passive construction, the object that should lose
its Case-licensing and need to be licensed by I◦ is the object that is licensed by v ◦ , namely, the
Recipient DP. The theme DP is licensed by Appl◦ and shouldn’t be affected by the passive. This
prediction is confirmed here:5

(38) a. The chef cooked the children breakfast.

b. The children were cooked breakfast.
c. *? Breakfast was cooked the children.

13.4.3 Licensing objects in unaccusatives/inchoatives

Recall that there are intransitive constructions where the single argument of the predicate is the
subject of the sentence, but carries the thematic role of theme.

(39) a. The chair broke.

b. The rain fell.

Based on what we’ve concluded in this chapter, we expect this theme argument to orig-
inate inside the VP. But these DPs end up as canonical subjects in Spec,IP, bearing nominative
Case. How is this so? Researchers have generally treated these as essentially inherently passive
predicates: they are predicates that do not assign accusative case to their internal argument, and
do not assign an external thematic role (adhering to Burzio’s Generalization).

(40) a. The balloons popped.

Chapter 13: Decomposing VP and CP 481

b. IP

DP I′

the balloons I◦ vP
[pst]
[𝜑: 3rd,pl ] v′

v◦ VP
[pass]
VP

V◦ DP
√
pop
the balloons

The assumption here is one which (thankfully) matches the name of the phenomenon:
unaccusative predicates are those that inherently don’t assign accusative Case to their internal
arguments. In the framework we’ve sketched here, this means that the v ◦ that occurs with unac-
cusatives is the passive v ◦ , with no external argument and without the ability to assign accusative,
which in our model means there is no 𝜑-probe on v ◦ . The only Case licenser in a sentence like
(40a) is finite I◦ , so the theme argument is the Goal of an Agree operation initiated by the probe
on I◦ .

Decomposing lexical ditransitive predicates 13.5

There is a common cross-linguistic pattern that English also realizes which may be on your mind.
Many ditransitive sentences with two DP objects have a counterpart in which the order of the
Recipient (red, bold) and theme (blue, italics) arguments is reversed and the Recipient is ex-
pressed as a PP rather than as a DP.

(41) a. Malia gave Langston the receipts.

b. Malia gave the receipts to Langston.

At first glance, the DP-PP sentences seem to be completely synonymous with their DP-DP
double object counterparts and to stand in a one-to-one correspondence with them. Indeed, early
on in generative grammar, it was held that any DP-PP ditransitive sentence could be transformed
into a DP-DP double object sentence by an operation known as Dative Shift (in many languages,
Chapter 13: Decomposing VP and CP 482

Recipients are marked by dative case morphology or dative case particles). However, certain
semantic restrictions on the two sentence types have led this view to be abandoned (Green 1974;
Oehrle 1976; Jackendoff 1990). For instance, Recipients in DP-DP double object sentences, but
not in DP-PP ditransitive sentences, are constrained to be animate.

(42) DP-DP ditransitive sentence:

a. Malia sent Langston the receipts.
b. * Malia sent the post office box the receipts.
(43) DP-PP ditransitive sentence:
a. Malia sent the receipts to Langston.
b. Malia sent the receipts to the post office box.

This effect is so strong that noun phrases that can be interpreted as inanimate in a DP-PP ditran-
sitive sentence are coerced into an animate interpretation in the corresponding DP-DP double
object sentence, if that is possible. For instance, in (44b), Philadelphia cannot be interpreted as
a location, as is possible in (44a), though it can be interpreted metonymically as ‘people at the
Philadelphia office’ (of an organization/corporation).6

(44) a. Malia sent the receipts to Philadelphia.

(ambiguous between location and metonymy reading)
b. Malia sent Philadelphia the receipts.
(only metonymy reading)

What the facts in (42)–(44) suggest is that ascribing exactly the same thematic role (that
of Recipient) to the first DP in a double object sentence and to the PP in a DP-PP ditransitive
sentence is not quite correct. Rather, the PP headed by to denotes a path or direction along which
the theme moves, and the complement of to denotes the path’s endpoint or goal, which can
be either a Recipient at that location, as in (43a), or a pure location, as in (43b). We give the
structures that we are assuming shortly.
This move of carefully distinguishing between Recipients and locations is supported by
some patterns using the predicates get and go: get is a transitive predicate that takes a Recipient
subject and a theme complement, whereas go occurs with a theme subject and a location as
a complement. There is a parallel between (42)–(44) on the one hand and the corresponding
simple get and go sentences in (45) and (46) on the other. It is also possible to replace get by
have or receive without changing the judgments; the point is that verbs that require Recipient
arguments behave differently than those that simply require a goal argument, confirming this
analysis of the ditransitive sentences on the same grounds.

(45) Parallel to DP-DP ditransitive sentence:

a. Langston got the receipts.
b. * The post office box got the receipts.
c. Philadelphia got the receipts.
(only metonymy reading)
Chapter 13: Decomposing VP and CP 483

(46) Parallel to DP-PP ditransitive sentence:

a. The receipts went to Langston.
b. The receipts went to the post office box.
c. The receipts went to Philadelphia.
(ambiguous between metonymy and location reading)

Schematic structures for (45) and (46) are given in (47). As we saw in the preceding sections,
◦
Appl assigns a Recipient thematic role to the DP it introduces in its specifier, and the theme
DP is introduced inside the VP (we draw it as a complement, though it could readily go in either
complement or specifier position of VP). In contrast, the DP-PP construction requires the theme
to enter in its specifier and the goal PP is the complement of V◦ . We explicitly draw the [caus]
feature on v ◦ in these trees to re-emphasize how the lexical meaning of give is derived. For each,
we show the morphological rule explaining that the lexical predicate give in English can realize
two different structures: in one the Recipient argument is added via an applicative, and in the
other the goal argument is added as a PP.

(47) a. vP

agent v′

v◦ ApplP
[caus]
Recipient Appl′

Appl◦ VP

(theme) V′

V◦ (theme)
√
give

DP-DP double object structure

√
v ◦ + Appl◦ + give ⟷ give
Chapter 13: Decomposing VP and CP 484

b. vP

DP v′

agent v◦ VP
[caus]
DP V′

theme V◦ PP
√
go
P′

P◦ DP
to
goal

DP-PP ditransitive structure

√
v ◦ + Appl◦ + go ⟷ give

In the DP-PP ditransitive examples presented so far, the goal PP complement is headed
by a transitive P. The X′ schema leads us to expect that semantically suitable intransitive heads
should also be able to serve as complements of go, and this expectation is borne out in (48), where
here and there are plausibly pro-forms for PPs, P heads without arguments of their own. Both
here and there can appear in DP-PP ditransitives.

(48) a. Malia sent the receipts { here, there }.

b. The receipts went { here, there }.

Notice that here and there unambiguously refer to locations or to paths with locations as
endpoints (or goals). Therefore, neither (48a) nor (48b) have metonymy readings, in contrast to
(44a) and (46c), respectively. Moreover, the ill-formedness of (49a) and (49b) follows from the fact
that these sentences violate the selectional restriction imposed by get on its specifier (compare
the absence of location readings in (44b) and (46b)).7,8

(49) a. * Malia sent { here, there } the receipts.

b. * { Here, there } got the receipts.
Chapter 13: Decomposing VP and CP 485

Decomposing CP 13.6
The decompositional approach to the verb phrase that we have adopted here probably raises many
questions for you—if VP is actually composed of lots of syntactic structure, does that mean that
kind of analysis is possible all over the place? Short answer: yes. That can be intimidating, but it
also is simply reflective of how complex human language actually is. We conclude this chapter
by moving outside the verb phrase, looking up the tree at CP. As we will see, there is good reason
to think that there is actually complex syntactic structure at multiple levels. We have already
seen this in the inflectional domain, where we see projections for auxiliary verbs, negation, and
other elements proliferate at times. But one area that we have continued to treat with the utmost
simplicity is the CP domain, composed of (up to this point) a simplex CP.
Rizzi (1997) pointed out a variety of Italian facts that make it challenging to claim that the
CP domain is always as simple as a sole CP projection. To understand the argument, we’ll consider
the two kinds of emphasis constructions we first encountered in Chapter 8: topicalization and
focus movement. In Italian topicalization, the topic phrase (the element being talked about) is at
the left edge of the sentence, and there is a pronoun inside the sentence that refers to it (similar
to the English translation).

(50) Italian topicalization

Il tuo libro, lo ho letto
det your book, it I.have read
‘Your book, I have read it.’

Focus movement in Italian is similar but not identical: there is prosodic emphasis on the focused
phrase at the left edge of the sentence, and no matching pronoun lower in sentence. Focalization,
as in English, yields a contrastive reading.

(51) Italian focus movement

il tuo libRo ho letto (, non il suo)
det your book I.have read not det his
‘Your book I read (, not his).’

Based on this evidence, we could assume that both focused phrases and topic phrases are
in Spec,CP in Italian. But Rizzi (1997) shows that in embedded clauses, different constructions
make this simplex CP impossible to maintain.9

(52) Italian complementizers

a. che, roughly ‘that’
• precedes finite embedded clauses
• precedes topic/focus XPs
• [CP che topic/focus [IP sentence ] ]
Chapter 13: Decomposing VP and CP 486

b. di, roughly ‘of’

• precedes non-finite embedded clauses
• follows topic/focus XPs
• [CP topic/focus di [IP sentence ] ]

We can see these basic patterns illustrated in (53), where the embedded CP in each instance
is introduced by either che or di (depending on the finiteness of the embedded clause).

(53) a. Credo [CP che loro apprezzerebbero molto il tuo libro. ]

I.believe that they would.appreciate much det your book
‘I believe that they would appreciate your book very much.’
b. Credo [CP di apprezzare molto il tuo libro. ]
I.believe of to.appreciate much det your book
‘I believe of to appreciate your book very much.’

When we add topicalization to the mix, however, we see how it interacts with these complemen-
tizers. The examples in (54) show that che is grammatical when it precedes a topicalized phrase,
but ungrammatical when it follows that phrase. All the following Italian data are drawn from
Rizzi (1997, 288f).

(54) a. Credo che il tuo libro, loro lo apprezzerebbero molto.

I.believe that det your book they it would.appreciate much
‘I believe that your book, they would appreciate it a lot.’
b. * Credo, il tuo libro, che loro lo apprezzerebbero molto.
I.believe that det your book they it would.appreciate much
Attempted: I believe, your book, that they would appreciate it a lot.

This is already somewhat problematic from our treatment of CP thus far. If topicalized phrases
are in Spec,CP, they ought to precede a complementizer element. But here, the topicalized phrase
follows the complementizer. This is further complicated by the fact that all complementizers do
not behave the same; the di complementizer is precisely the opposite, following the topicalized
phrase instead of preceding it.

(55) a. * Credo di il tuo libro, apprezzar-lo molto.

I.believe of det your book to.appreciate-it much
Attempted: ‘I believe of your book to appreciate it a lot.’
b. Credo il tuo libro, di apprezzar-lo molto.
I.believe det your book of to.appreciate-it much
‘I believe your book of to appreciate it a lot.’

So what we find is that topicalized phrases in Italian, which presumably are in a consistent posi-
tion in the left periphery of the clause, vary with respect to which complementizers they occur
with. The che complementizer precedes topics, and the di complementizer follows topics. The
same facts hold for focused elements and other kinds of left peripheral elements. We don’t walk
through the full range of empirical facts here, but Rizzi (1997) concludes that the left periphery
of sentences has a maximal structure looking something like (56); this is what was formerly our
Chapter 13: Decomposing VP and CP 487

CP. He labeled the highest projection in the CP domain (where che appears) as ‘Force’ (where
sentence force is marked, e.g. declaratives vs. questions) and he marked the lowest projection as
Fin(iteness), as it interfaces with IP.
(56) Structure of the left periphery (formerly CP)
ForceP

Force′

Force◦ TopP
che
(Topic XPs) Top′

Top◦ FocP

(Focused XPs) Foc′

Foc◦ FinP

Fin′

Fin◦ IP

sentence
Rizzi proposed that this complex CP only emerged when strictly necessary, and otherwise a sim-
plex CP occurs. So we will nonetheless regularly draw tree structures that look like (57), unless
we are otherwise compelled to by the evidence.
(57) CP

C′

C◦ IP

sentence
Rizzi’s proposals have turned out to be a best case scenario for a theoretician: proposing a
structure based on indirect evidence to account for a complicated set of facts, which are then later
confirmed by overt, direct evidence from unrelated languages. We’ve already seen that Gungbe
(a Niger-Congo language spoken in Nigeria and Benin) has overt morphology for topic and focus
projections. Previously, we said these realize C◦ heads, with their associated topicalized/focused
phrase in Spec,CP.
(58) a. Dàn lɔ́ yà, kòfí hù-*(ì)
snake the top Kofi kill.pfv-3sg
‘As for the snake, Kofi killed it.’
Chapter 13: Decomposing VP and CP 488

b. Ɛ́tɛ́k *(wɛ̀ ) Sɛ́ná xìá tk? Object information question

what *(foc) Sena read-pRf
‘What did Sena read?’
c. Wémàk *(wɛ̀ ) Sɛ́ná xìá tk. Object focus
book *(foc) Sena read-pRf
‘Sena read A BOOK.’

What we didn’t see previously is that it is possible to embed these constructions in an embedded
clause introduced by a complementizer. This is shown for a focus construction in (59b) and a
topic construction in (60b).

(59) a. Ùn lɛ̀ n ɖɔ̀ Sɛ́ná xìá wémà lɔ́

I think.pfv comp Sena read.pfv book det
‘I think that Sena read the specific book.’
b. Ùn lɛ̀ n [ForceP ɖɔ̀ [FocP wémà lɔ́ wɛ̀ Sɛ́na xìá tk ] ]
I think.pfv comp book det foc Sena read.pfv
‘I think that Sena read the specific booK.’

(60) a. Dàn lɔ́ yà Kòfí hù ì

snake det top Kofi kill-pfv it
‘As for the specific snake, Kofi killed it.’
b. Ùn ɖɔ́ [ForceP ɖɔ̀ [TopP dàn lɔ́ yà Kòfí hù ì ]]
I say.pfv comp snake det top Kofi kill.pfv it
‘I said that as for the specific snake, Kofi killed it.’

This immediately causes problems for a simplex CP, but is straightforwardly explained if there is
a complex left periphery as proposed by Rizzi, and the complementizers in the examples below
sit in Force◦ , the same position as Italian che.

Conclusion: exploding projections everywhere? 13.7

This chapter has allowed us to handle nuanced complexity in both the low domain of the clause
(we can call it the VP/verbal domain) and the high domain of the clause (we can call it the CP
domain, or the left periphery of the clause). Some of this complexity you may have been aware of
before (for example, the need to account for ditransitive verbs); some of it may have been new to
you. But either way, parts of our theory that we were previously simple are now more complex.
Though it’s worth nothing that the model itself hasn’t really become more complex—our basic
tools for building structures (the X′ schema, feature valuation by Agree, etc.) all remain the same.
The change is that structures that we were treating as a single projection in the syntax, we are
now treating as if they were multiple projections.
Chapter 13: Decomposing VP and CP 489

An important question that may be on your mind is: just how expansive is this decompo-
sition enterprise? Are we going to keep taking individual projections and exploding them into
a multitude of more complex ones? The short answer is ‘no’: for the most part, we are arriv-
ing at something close to the maximal complexity of clause structure. But in terms of how our
model works, the answer is a qualified ‘yes’: if the evidence suggests that there exists another
projection in a clause structure, then we posit one! It does not much affect our overall model or
approach, but some trees for some sentences might be somewhat more complex than one might
have expected.
It does raise questions about how to draw specific trees. We don’t need to draw the whole
structure in (56) to replace every CP we ever draw: we would never accomplish anything if we
were doing this. (56) represents the proposed maximal structure our former CP can take; in many
constructions in many languages, there is no need to posit that level of complexity. So drawing
a simplex CP where it is merited remains our standard practice. The complex left periphery is
invoked where it appears to be necessary. What’s actually going on in speaker’s minds? That’s
an important question that we don’t know all the answers to yet. Rizzi originally said that CP
is simplex (unexploded) CP unless the particular construction demanded more complexity, and
most syntacticians treat it like that. We treat lots of things like this—we know where negation
goes in a tree when it’s present, but in a non-negated sentence we don’t draw negation. Same
for various kinds of auxiliaries, and other particles/constructions—we know where they go in the
tree when they’re present, but we treat them as absent when they seem to be absent. The idea is
that CP behaves in a similar way.
The vP, in contrast, dependably behaves as if it’s present: in our model as we’ve developed
it in this chapter, v ◦ encodes whether or not a sentence is active or passive, it case-licenses objects,
and it introduces agent thematic roles. Those functions are happening in most sentences, and
therefore we consistently expect vP to be present. Syntacticians still don’t always draw vP in a
sentence—sometimes we want our trees to be smaller because we’re using them to communicate
things about structure that is not inside vP, meaning we simplify what vP looks like (similar to
drawing a triangle over a phrase).
So we can conclude that even simple sentences in a language can have a very complex
structure, with lots of hierarchical projections. Is human language necessarily this way? Do all
languages share the exact same functional projections? What is actually universal as part of UG,
and what is not? There has historically been a split in the field in this regard: some people propose
a universal ‘map’ of functional projections that is hard-coded into UG. Otherwise propose that
UG is simpler, and the kinds of projections that emerge are posited by children as they learn the
languages that they are learning. We are inclined towards the latter explanation, but proponents
of this approach are left to explain why there is such strong cross-linguistic consistency in the
hierarchy of functional projections. For the most part, these are empirical questions that are still
being worked out. If a sequence of functional heads turns out to be universal, it’s plausibly part
of UG. If it turns out NOT to be universal, then it’s clearly not.
 Chapter 13: Decomposing VP and CP 490

New Empirical Observations

▶ ditransitive sentences
▶ applicative morphemes
▶ topic and focus constructions in the left periphery of a sentence

Components of the Theoretical Model

▶ decomposing simple projections to complex domains

▶ agents introduced in little vP
▶ Recipients introduced in ApplP
▶ accusative case and voice are encoded on v ◦ , via Agree in the usual way
▶ CP projections: ForceP, TopP, FocP, FinP

Notes 13.8
1. The languages reported here (and the pattern is common) do have a select number of lexical ditransitives, verbs
like give and teach that inherently take two objects. In some languages these show fundamental distinctions from
ditransitives derived from applicatives; in others, they behave roughly the same. The world of ditransitive syntax
is expansive and we don’t attempt to describe the full scope of variation between languages. If you find yourself
wanting more, you should take more syntax classes!

2. But, we should note, there is fascinating variety and fine-grained variation between languages in the behavior of
applicatives. A good introduction is Jeong (2007).

3. The approach presented here is a mildly modified (and not fully precise) version of lexical decomposition as is stan-
dard in Distributed Morphology (Halle and Marantz 1993; McGinnis 2017; J. D. Bobaljik 2017).

4. While this remains a robust crosslinguistic generalization, it is not a literal universal: some languages have imper-
sonal passive constructions where an external argument is removed but an internal argument remains. Burzio’s
Generalization is certainly too accurate to be a coincidence, so there is something foundational about the link be-
tween external arguments and licensing objects, even if it is not irreducibly part of Universal Grammar.

5. There are languages which treat their objects in ditransitives (somewhat) symmetrically, allowing either to be pas-
sivized in a passive construction. Researchers have posited solutions to these puzzles, but it takes us afield from our
main tasks here. Part of the solution is that even in languages that can passivize either object, these same asym-
metries tend to appear in corners of their grammars, suggesting that something like this hierarchical account exists
even in those cases (Holmberg, Sheehan, and van der Wal 2019; Newman 2021).

6. Metonymy is the traditional term for various types of figurative language use, notably including the one relevant
here, where an expression that literally refers to a location is used to refer instead to a group of people typically
 Chapter 13: Decomposing VP and CP 491

located there. Common examples include the White House (broadly ‘the U.S. executive’, more narrowly ‘the U.S.
president along with close staf’), the Kremlin (‘the Russian government’), Westminster (‘the U.K. parliament’), and
so on.

7. The alternation in (i)—specifically, the well-formedness of (b)—is only apparently problematic for what we say in the
text.

(i) a. ✔ Amy sent the mail { back, off }.

b. ✔ Amy sent { back, off } the mail.

Back and off are so-called particles, which can behave like ordinary PPs, as in (a), but also more like bound affixes,
as in (b). A detailed analysis of the syntax of particles is beyond the scope of this chapter, but evidence for their
differing syntactic status in (i) comes from contrasts like (ii).

(ii) a. ✔ Amy sent the mail right { back, off }.

(cf. ✔ right to the dean)
b. * Amy sent right { back, off } the mail.

8. From what we have said so far, it is clear that not every DP-PP ditransitive sentence has a double object (DP-DP)
counterpart. Specifically, DP-PP ditransitive sentences with goals that are locations rather than Recipients have
no DP-DP double object counterpart. However, since goals are not required to be pure locations, but can instead be
Recipients, it might still be the case that every DP-DP double object sentence has a DP-PP ditransitive counterpart.
But this turns out not to be true either. The reason is that in a DP-PP ditransitive structure, the preposition to imposes
a semantic requirement on the theme: namely, that the referent of the theme argument travel (or at least be able
in principle to travel) to the referent of the goal denoted by the complement of to along some path. By contrast,
themes in DP-DP double object sentences, which lack to, aren’t subject to such a requirement. For instance, since it
is perfectly possible for ideas or migraines to be the result of certain causes, the DP-DP double object sentences in
(i) are acceptable.

(i) DP-DP Double object sentence:

a. The scandal gave the reporter an idea.

b. Flickering lights give some people a migraine.

(ii) DP-PP ditransitive sentence:

a. * The scandal gave an idea to the reporter.

b. * Flickering lights give a migraine to some people.

The reason that the corresponding DP-PP ditransitive sentences in (ii) are unacceptable is that the idea and
the migraine are conceptualized as arising within somebody’s mind or brain as the result of a cause, but without
having traveled there along some path. One way of putting this in terms of thematic roles is to say that the argument
◦
introduced by Appl in these instances is an experiencer rather than an ordinary Recipient. As expected, the simple
get and go sentences in (i) and (ii) are parallel to (iii) and (iv).

(iii) Parallel to DP-DP double object sentence:

a. The reporter got an idea.

b. Some people get a migraine headache.

(iv) Parallel to DP-PP ditransitive sentence:

a. * An idea went to the reporter.

 Chapter 13: Decomposing VP and CP 492

b. * A migraine headache goes to some people.

Contagious diseases, incidentally, seem not to be conceptualized as traveling along a path. Instead, they are
conceptualized as spreading (occupying their original location in addition to the new location). This explains the
contrast between (v) and (vi).

(v) a. Lisa gave Joel a bad cold.

b. Joel got a bad cold.
(vi) a. * Lisa gave a bad cold to Joel.
b. * A bad cold went to Joel.

9. Aspects of this summary were inspired by and adapted from a class handout on the topic from Paul Hagstrom.

Exercises and problems 13.9

Exercise 13.1: Practice with ditransitive verbs A
Draw trees for the following sentences, triangling over DPs, PPs, and AdvPs.

(1) Joan gave Antonio a new blanket.

(2) Angel sends Liam a letter every month.
(3) Mateo should put the cheesecake on the table.
(4) The leak in the hull eventually sank the ship.
(5) The baker might burn the focaccia.
(6) Warm spring days will melt the ice in due time.
(7) The birthday party guests sang me a song.
(8) The professor’s students could write her a poem.
(9) Kingston built his family a house on the hill.
Chapter 13: Decomposing VP and CP 493

Exercise 13.2: Practice with ditransitive verbs B

A. Suggest semantic decompositions for the bolded verbs in the following sentences.

(1) The builders laid new flooring in the bathroom.

(2) Paolo already fed the cat dinner.
(3) My time teaching first-graders taught me patience.
(4) Grandma showed me photos of Mom when she was a little girl.
(5) Please notify me of any changes to the document.

B. Study the sentence pairs below. Answer in one or two sentences: what do the bolded verbs
have in common? You do not need to explain why this phenomenon occurs, only what the
phenomenon itself is.

(6) a. They set the glass on the coaster.

b. * They set the coaster the glass.
(7) a. You can plug your computer into the outlet.
b. * You can plug the outlet your computer.
(8) a. The fox recounted its life story to the crow.
b. * The fox recounted the crow its life story.
(9) a. The phonologist reported her findings to the conference attendees.
b. * The phonologist reported the conference attendees her findings.

Exercise 13.3: English ditransitive ambiguities

A. Provide a paraphrase for the two interpretations of the newspaper headline in (1) and the
VP shell structure corresponding to each paraphrase.

(1) Lawyers Give Poor Free Legal Advice

B. Repeat (A) for (2).

(2) I will make you my favorite sandwich.

C. Repeat (A) for the two salient interpretations of the punchline in (3).

(3) Q: What did the Zen master say to the guy at the hotdog stand?
A: Make me one with everything.
Chapter 13: Decomposing VP and CP 494

Exercise 13.4: English put

Consider the discussion of decomposing lexical ditransitives in § 13.5. Based on the evidence in
(1)-(2), what is the analysis of English put? Draw a tree for (1a) and write out a morphological
spellout rule for put (similar to how we do for give in the chapter).

(1) a. Amy put the books on the shelf.

b. * Amy put the shelf the books.

(2) a. Amy put the books there.

b. * Amy put there the books.

Exercise 13.5: Object control versus ECM

Using (1) and (2) as a model, determine whether the verbs in (3) are ECM verbs or object con-
trol verbs (or neither!). Use only active verb forms. For the purpose of this exercise, do not
be concerned about how you would semantically decompose any object control verbs that you
find.
Judgments for assume:

(1) a. ✔ I assumed the meeting to be over.

b. ✔ I assumed there to be a problem.
c. * I assumed the meeting that it was over.
d. ✔ I assumed that there was a problem.

Conclusion for assume:

The grammaticality of (1b) shows that assume is an ECM verb. The judgments in (1c)–(1d)
are not required, but they corroborate the ECM analysis.

Judgments for convince:

(2) a. ✔ I convinced my friend to take the job.

b. * I convinced there to be a problem.
c. ✔ I convinced my friend that he should take the job.
d. * I convinced that there was a problem.

Conclusion for convince:

The ungrammaticality of (2b) shows that convince is an object control verb. The judgments
in (2c)- (2d) are not required, but they corroborate the object control analysis.

(3) acknowledge, advise, allow, anticipate, ask, beg, blackmail, challenge, command, con-
sider, corral, dare, deem, determine, discover, encourage, enjoin, expect, fear, find, forbid,
get, help, instruct, invite, know, order, perceive, permit, predict, pressure, prompt, prove,
provoke, remind, report, request, require, tell, tempt, urge, warn
Chapter 13: Decomposing VP and CP 495

Exercise 13.6: Literal and figurative readings with ditransitive predicates

Explain the pattern of interpretations in (1) and (2), or as much of it as possible. Assume the
judgments as given even if they are not your own.

(1) a. The finger { got, went } to the patient. (unambiguously literal)

b. The surgeon gave the finger to the patient. (unambiguously literal)
c. The surgeon got the finger to the patient. (unambiguously literal)
(2) a. The patient got the finger (from the surgeon). (ambiguous between literal and id-
iomatic reading)
b. The surgeon gave the patient the finger. (ambiguous between literal and idiomatic
reading)
c. The surgeon got the patient the finger. (unambiguously literal)

Exercise 13.7: Practice with decomposing predicates

A. Get is one of the most versatile verbs in English. In addition to taking DP and PP/AdvP com-
plements, it also takes AdjP complements. Give the VP shell structures for the sentences
in (1).

(1) a. The children got wet.

b. The rain got the children wet.

B. Give VP shell structures for the sentences in (2). As much as possible, avoid assuming silent
heads.

(2) a. The red cloth enraged the bull.

b. The new fiscal policies enriched the king.
c. The news saddened me.

C. Build VP shell structures for the sentences in (3).

(3) a. They kept the president’s arrival almost completely secret.

b. They kept the president’s arrival a complete secret.

Exercise 13.8: Causative predicates in English

Modern English has causative verbs that are morphologically related to either other verbs, as in
(1a), or to other syntactic categories, as in (1b).

(1) a. drink, fall, lie (as in ‘lie down’, not ‘prevaricate’), rise, sit
b. full, gold

The causatives are not spelled out as homonymous with the same form, but at one point in history
the two forms were related by a regular phonological rule (specifically, ablaut or umlaut—see the
Wikipedia entries for these terms for more information). But historical sound changes has since
Chapter 13: Decomposing VP and CP 496

obscured those regularities. Over time, the meaning of the originally causative form has also
sometimes drifted away from a strict causative meaning. Can you figure out the causative verbs
in question?
Hint: Consult etymonline (see a word’s “Related entries”) or the Oxford English Dictionary On-
line.

Problem 13.1: English-learning children’s (in)transitives

A. Sentences like (1) are ungrammatical in adult English.

(1) You’re giggling me!

Intended meaning: ‘You’re making me giggle!’

But many children go through a stage of producing such sentences with activity verbs such
as dance, giggle, laugh, and others. What is the difference between the children’s grammar
and the adult grammar?
B. If necessary, modify your answer to (A) in light of the judgments of (2)–(4) for adult English.

(2) a. The horses { walked, trotted, galloped, jumped }.

b. The trainers { walked, trotted, galloped, jumped } the horses.
(3) a. The athletes { walked, ran, marched } around the track.
b. The coach { walked, ran, marched } the athletes around the track.
(4) a. * At some point, all new parents want to sleep their baby.
b. ✔ I have one set to show the desktop, and another to sleep the display. … Hit
Command-Option-H to Hide Others. This works in almost any app, letting
you quickly disappear all apps other than the frontmost one.
c. ✔ They were known as the ‘desaparecidos’, because the Argentinian junta
would ‘disappear’ them—for instance, by throwing them out of planes over
the Andes.

Problem 13.2: Explaining (missing) patterns of interpretation

Why does (1b) lack a ‘fetch’ interpretation?

(1) a. They got the package.

Interpretation 1: ✔ They received the package.
Interpretation 2: ✔ They fetched the package.
b. We got them the package.
Interpretation 1: ✔ We made it come about that they received the package.
Interpretation 2: * We made it come about that they fetched the package.
Chapter 13: Decomposing VP and CP 497

Problem 13.3: Apparent gaps in paradigms of transitivity alternations

Unlike get in (1), verbs of transfer like hand, kick, throw, and others don’t participate in the
causative alternation, as shown in (2). Why might this be so?

(1) a. ✔ The package got to Julie.

b. ✔ We got the package to Julie.
(2) a. * The ball { handed, kicked, threw, … } to Julie.
b. ✔ We { handed, kicked, threw, … } the ball to Julie.

Problem 13.4: Persian light verbs

The data here come from Harley (2017) and Folli, Harley, and Karimi (2005).
Persian (Indo-Iranian) is a largely verb-final language that expresses many verbal concepts via
complex predicates composed of a lexical element and what is often termed a light verb. The
approach to complex verb phrases adopted in this chapter provide a toolkit for analyzing Persian
complex predicates.
For the examples below, come up with an analysis for the structures given. Draw tree
structures for the sentences in (3). You can ignore the morpheme be and the morpheme glossed
ez (for ezâfe) for the purposes of this exercise.

(1) a. . ٓ
Tim-e mâ unâ-ro shekast dâd.
team-ez we they-râ defeat gave
‘Our team defeated them.’

b. . ٓ
Tim-e mâ az unâ shekast xord.
team-ez we of they defeat collided
‘Our team was defeated by them.’ (Literally(ish): our team encountered defeat from
them.)

(2) a. .
Minu bachcha-ro kotak zad.
Minu child-râ beating hit
‘Minu hit the child.’
b. .
Bachche kotak xord.
child beating collided
‘The child got hit.’
Chapter 13: Decomposing VP and CP 498

(3) a. . ٓ ٓ
Âb be jush âmad.
water be boil came
‘The water boiled’
b. . ٓ ٓ
Nimâ âb-ro be jush âvard.
Nima water-râ be boil brought
‘Nima boiled the water.’

(4) a. .
Homâ be gerye oftâd.
Homa be crying fell
‘Homa started to cry.’

b. .
Nimâ Homâ-ro be gerye andâxt.
Nima Homa-râ be crying dropped
‘Nima made Homa (start to) cry.’

(5) a. .
Miz-o tamiz kard-am.
table-râ clean made-1sg
‘I cleaned the table.’
b. .
Miz tamiz shod.
table clean became
‘The table got/became clean.’

Problem 13.5: Figurative readings with ditransitive: give an earful

The example in (1) uses the idiom give an earful, which means something like ‘to angrily tell
someone what you think about something.’ We have assumed throughout this text that idioms
must be constituents (at some level of representation) to retain their idiomatic interpretation.
Given the decomposition of VP that we’ve undertaken in this chapter, to what extent does this
confirm or disconfirm our assumptions about idiom constituency?

(1) Tennessee coach Pat Summitt, the longtime head of the Lady Vols, gives an earful to Alexis
Hornbuckle during their win over Texas Tech.
(Daily Pennsylvanian, 28 March 2005, p. 9)
 14
Additional properties
of A′-movement

Chapter outline
14.1 Relative clauses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 500
14.1.1 Wh-relative clauses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 500
14.1.2 That relative clauses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 502
14.1.3 Zero relative clauses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 503
14.1.4 Doubly marked relative clauses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 504
14.2 Constraints on movement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 505
14.2.1 Islands for movement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 506
14.2.2 Explaining (some) constraints on movement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 509
14.2.3 Open questions: explaining other islands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 512
14.2.4 Takeaway lessons from constraints on movement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 512
14.3 Wh-in-situ: wh-questions without wh-movement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 513
14.3.1 Wh-scope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 513
14.3.2 Wh-in situ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 513
14.4 A Copy Theory of Movement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 515
14.4.1 A Copy Theory of Movement for wh-in-situ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 515
14.4.2 Pronouncing multiple copies in wh-movement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 516
14.4.3 Partial wh-movement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 517
14.4.4 Resumptive pronouns as pronunciation of multiple copies . . . . . . . . . 517
14.4.5 Pronoun copying in A′ -movement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 518
14.4.6 Child English . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 520
14.5 Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 521
14.6 Exercises and problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 523

In Chapter 8, we showed that wh-phrases in questions and various other constructions

move from their canonical position (the position where they are interpreted with respect to their
thematic role) to Spec(CP). We also showed that this is one among a variety of movements with
a similar set of characteristics, which the field refers to as A′ -movements (movement to a non-
argument position). In this chapter we expand our understanding of A′ -movements in various
ways. First, we discuss various constructions that (sometimes invisibly) display properties of A′ -
Chapter 14: Additional properties of A′ -movement 500

movement; we begin with relative clauses, and then discuss wh-in-situ constructions. This directs
us to a discussion of a major theoretical perspective, the Copy Theory of Movement.
Also, we consider some significant constraints on A′ -movement. Specifically, while A′ -
movement is able to occur at quite long distances, it is in fact constrained. We describe a number
of so-called islands for movement (domains which are impossible to move a syntactic element
out of), and discuss ways that human language navigates these constraints.

Relative clauses 14.1

Across the world’s languages, it is typical for a language grammar to contain a strategy for con-
verting a CP into a structure that can modify a noun phrase. (1) shows two examples that are
similar to each other in English, where the bracketed DP contains not just a determiner and
a noun (familiar DP material) but also an entire additional embedded clause. these bracketed
clauses modifying nouns are called relative clauses. (1) shows two strategies for relative clauses
in English: one which uses a wh-pronoun, and one which uses a that complementizer.

(1) a. Alex said that they bought [DP a feast [ which they plan to devour . ] ]
b. Alex said that they bought [DP a feast [ that they plan to devour . ] ]

A key property to observe is that devour in English is a transitive verb that always requires its
object. Nonetheless, the sentences in (1) show no overt object of devour; there is a gap there
instead. But in relative clauses (like in questions) the interpretation of the gap is not in question.
Here, we know that the thing that is being planned to be devoured is the feast. So relative clauses
leave a gap inside of them, which is interpreted as the same element as the head noun that the
relative clause is used to modify. This section explores the properties of relative clauses and
shows how they parallel the other A′ -constructions that we have previously explored (such as
wh-questions).

14.1.1 Wh-relative clauses

As (2) and (3) show, there is a striking parallel in English between wh-relative clauses and indirect
questions: both are introduced by wh-phrases. In each of them we also annotate a gap that
appears inside the clause: whatever thematic position the wh-phrase relates to is empty in a
question and in a relative clause.

(2) Indirect question:

a. We can’t remember who moved in next door.
b. We can’t remember who(m) you met .
c. We can’t remember where you met them .
Chapter 14: Additional properties of A′ -movement 501

d. We can’t remember which you prefer .

e. We can’t remember whose parents you met .
(3) Relative clause:
a. the people who moved in next door.
b. the people who(m) you met .
c. the place where you met them .
d. the movie which you prefer .
e. the friend whose parents you met .

This parallel follows straightforwardly if we assume that wh-relative clauses are structurally par-
allel to indirect questions. The structure of the relative clause in (3b) is given in (4a): a wh-phrase
raises from its base position to Spec,CP of a C◦ bearing a wh-feature (but, crucially, not a Q fea-
ture, as relative clauses are not questions). In contrast to indirect questions, which are ordinarily
complements, relative clauses are always modifiers. We therefore integrate the relative clause
into the surrounding syntactic structure by adjunction, as in (4b) (where we collapse the internal
structure of the relative clause for simplicity).
Note that we annotate C◦ in relative clauses as [+wh, -q]; recall from Chapter 8 that C◦
heads are where our clause-typing features are located. Relative clauses do have wh-properties
and therefore are [+wh]. On the other hand, they are not questions, and therefore are marked as
[-q]. As with all such components of our theory, we mark them here as we are establishing our
model, but we don’t necessarily overtly draw the relevant features into every tree unless relevant
for the discussion that is underway.

(4) a. CP

DPi C′

who(m) C◦ IP
∅that
[+wh, -q] DPk I′

you I◦ VP
[pst]
you V′

V◦ t i
meet
Chapter 14: Additional properties of A′ -movement 502

b. DP

D′

D◦ N′
the
N′ CP

N◦ who(m) you met

people

14.1.2 That relative clauses

As we noted above, in addition to wh-relative clauses, English also has that relative clauses, as
illustrated in (5).1

(5) a. the people that moved in next door.

b. the people that you met .
c. the place that you met them .
d. the movie that you prefer .

Structurally, that relative clauses are parallel to wh-relative clauses: they share a distribu-
tion, and they show the same gap inside the relative clause that wh-relative clauses have. But in
contrast to wh-relative clauses, there is an overt complementizer that in the that relative clauses,
and the wh-phrase is silent. The structures corresponding to the ones in (4) are given in (6).

(6) a. CP

DPi C′

∅who(m) C◦ IP
that
[+wh, -q] DPk I′

you I◦ VP
[pst]
you V′

V◦ t i
meet
Chapter 14: Additional properties of A′ -movement 503

b. DP

D′

D◦ N′
the
N′ CP

N◦ that you met

people

14.1.3 Zero relative clauses

Given the availability of silent wh-elements and silent complementizers in English, we would
expect to find relative clauses that are not introduced by any overt element at all. Such zero
relative clauses (also known as contact relative clauses) are indeed possible in English, as
shown in (7).2

(7) a. the people you met.

b. the place you met them.
c. the movie you prefer.

Given the grammaticality of (7), we would expect the zero relative counterparts of subject
relative clauses like (7a)–(7b) to be fully grammatical and acceptable, but speakers tend to reject
examples like (7c), especially when they are presented in isolation.

(8) a. ✔ The people who moved in next door were from New York.
b. ✔ The people that moved in next door were from New York.
c. ⁇ The people moved in next door were from New York.

Nevertheless, structurally analogous examples, as in (9), are attested in some varieties of

North American English.

(9) a. Everybody lives in the mountains has an accent all to theirself. (Christian and
Wolfram 1976, front matter)
b. Three times a day some nurse looks like Pancho Villa shoots sheep cum into my
belly. (Hiaasen 1995, 248–249)

A number of such examples are documented in a wide variety of English varieties.3 The proper
analysis of zero subject relative clauses is still being debated and goes beyond the scope of this
textbook, so we don’t attempt to resolve it here.
Chapter 14: Additional properties of A′ -movement 504

14.1.4 Doubly marked relative clauses

Finally, given the discussion so far, we would expect to find the converse of zero relative clauses—
namely, ones with an overt wh-element in Spec(CP) combined with an overt complementizer, as
in (10).

(10) the people who(m) that you met

Such doubly marked relative clauses are judged to be unacceptable in mainstream varieties of
modern English. However, just like doubly marked indirect questions, they are attested in Middle
English, as shown in (40) (once again, the examples are from the Penn-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of
Middle English).

(11) a. thy freend which that thou has lorn (cmctmeli.m3, 218.C1.31)
‘your friend that you have lost’
b. the conseil which that was yeven to yow by the men of lawe and the wise folk (cmct-
meli.m3, 226.C2.373)
‘the counsel that was given to you by the men of law and the wise people’
c. the seconde condicion which that the same Tullius addeth in this matiere (cmct-
meli.m3, 228.C1.429)
‘the second condition that this same Tullius adds in this matter’
d. for hire olde freendes which that were trewe and wyse (cmctmeli.m3, 237.C2.799)
‘for her old friends who were loyal and wise’
e. the fire of angre and of wratthe, which that he sholde quenche (cmctpars.m3,
308.C2.859)
‘the fire of anger and wrath, which he should quench’

Doubly marked relative clauses are also attested in vernacular varieties of other languages.
(12) gives examples from Bavarian German.

(12) Bavarian (Bayer 1983, 23, (10a,b)):

a. der Hund der wo gestern d’ Katz bissn hod
the dog who that yesterday the cat bitten has
‘the dog that bit the cat yesterday’
b. die Frau dera wo da Xaver a Bussl g’gem hod
the woman who.dat that the a kiss given has
‘the woman that Xaver gave a kiss to’

So there may not be some deep insight to be had about the restriction in modern English
against doubly-marked relative clauses, other than that modern English doesn’t allow them. Be-
cause human language in general clearly allows them. We saw this same conclusion in Chapter 8
when discussing A′ -movements of various sorts: many languages have an overtly moved element
(ex., a wh-phrase, a focus, a topic, etc) that co-occurs with a complementizer in C◦ , so whatever
restriction occurs in modern Mainstream U.S. English in that regard is peculiar to this language
at this time.
Chapter 14: Additional properties of A′ -movement 505

Constraints on movement 14.2

In all of the examples of A′ -movement that we considered in Chapter 8, there was just a single
CP: the wh-phrase was contained within the CP somewhere and moves to the edge of CP, into
Spec,CP.

(13) [CP Whati were they reading t i ] ?

But there are many instances where movement appears to be much longer distance, how-
ever. In (14) the wh-phrase originates as the object of the verb at the bottom of the embedded
clause: the wh-object moves out of the embedded clause and moves to the edge of the main clause
CP.

(14) [CP Whati did he say [CP that they were reading t i ] ] ?

But if you examine (15), it is evident that wh-phrases can move to the main clause CP out of
an extended sequence of embedded clauses. Examples like those in (15) suggest that the structural
distance that a wh-phrase can move is unlimited, often called unbounded (that is, unbounded
apart from performance considerations such as limitations on memory: create too many more
levels of embedding and it’s hard to remember what you are talking about). Movement in (13) is
called local movement, as distinct from long-distance movement in (14)–(15c) (also known as
nonlocal movement).

(15) a. [CP Whati does she believe

[CP that he said
[CP that they were reading t i ] ] ] ?
b. [CP Whati are they claiming
[CP that she believes
[CP that he said
[CP that they were reading t i ] ] ] ] ?
c. [CP Whati do you think
[CP that they are claiming
[CP that she believes
[CP that he said
[CP that they were reading t i ] ] ] ] ] ?

Surprisingly, however, even very short-distance movement can be stunningly ungrammat-

ical, as shown in (16).

(16) a. They read Jonathan’s book.

b. * Whosei did they read t i book? (cf. ✔ Whose book did they read?)
Chapter 14: Additional properties of A′ -movement 506

Accordingly, beginning in the 1960s, attempts were made to understand the conditions under
which wh-movement is and isn’t possible. Ross (1967) catalogued various contexts where wh-
movement isn’t possible, which he gave the descriptive blanket term islands (the idea behind
the metaphor being that a wh-phrase is marooned—it can move within the island, but not escape
off of it).
Ross’s work represents significant empirical progress over what was known at the time
about wh-movement, but from a theoretical point of view, islands are simply a list of syntactic
contexts, sharply raising the question of whether it is possible to characterize them and to de-
rive the constraints on movement associated with them in a principled way. This chapter is not
intended to summarize the decades of work since Ross’s work. Rather, we illustrate Ross’s is-
land constraints in § 14.2.1 and present some conclusions/motivations for the existence of island
constraints (but we don’t attempt to explain all of them in this introductory text).

14.2.1 Islands for movement

Ross (1967) first discovered a number of contexts out of which wh-movement is unacceptable.
A lot of work has happened since then; the list of islands in (17) summarizes well documented
patterns that occur across a broad range of languages.

(17) Islands for movement

• noun complement clauses,
• relative clauses,4
• indirect questions (wh-islands)
• possessive noun phrases
• coordinate structures
• sentential subjects
• adjunct clauses

Coordinate Structure Constraint

We will begin with the contraint against extracting a single element out of a coordinate structure
(i.e., a conjunction: X and Y ).

(18) a. The children read novels and comic books.

b. * Whati did the children read novels and t i ?
c. * Whati did the children read t i and comic books?

This restriction is not simply about and needing some phonological material on either side
of it. It is possible to extract out of an about PP, as in (19b).

(19) a. The children read novels about dolphins.

b. Whati did the children read novels about t i ?
Chapter 14: Additional properties of A′ -movement 507

(20) a. The children read novels about dolphins and comic books about superheroes.
b. * Whati did the children read novels about t i and comic books about superheroes?
c. * Whati did the children read novels about dolphins and comic books about t i ?

One challenge to pondering island constraints is that sentences with movement out of
islands are just so confusing. This is kind of the point—our language grammars can have long-
distance movement (as the examples above in (15) show clearly), but long-distance movement out
of these island configurations is clearly unacceptable. And it’s tempting to say that the sentences
“just don’t make sense” (or something like that). But consider an example like (21):

(21) a. The customer ordered tiramisu and espresso.

b. * [ Which dessert ]i did the customer order t i and espresso?

c. * [ Which beverage ]i did the customer order tiramisu and t i ?

It’s completely reasonable to think that someone might know, for example, that the customer
ordered a dessert and an espresso, but didn’t know the particular dessert. We know this is rea-
sonable because we can construct a scenario: I know that the customer ordered a dessert and an
espresso, but I don’t know which dessert; which dessert did they order? But if we attempt to ask
it all in one sentence, as in (21b), it is clearly unacceptable. And in fact, such questions are un-
acceptable in a broad and unrelated group of the world’s languages, making this kind of island
constraint much too common to be a coincidence: there is clearly something deep about the
nature of human language that constrains long-distance movement of this sort.

Complex Noun Phrase Constraint

Next, we illustrate the island character of noun complement clauses (CPs that are complements of
Ns). First, recall from (14)–(15c) that long wh-movement out of that-complement clauses to verbs
is grammatical. By contrast, wh-movement out of that-complements to nouns is not, as shown
in (22) and (23). For clarity, in the next few examples, the heads associated with the complement
clauses are underlined.

Extra Info
In the rest of this section and for much of the remaining chapter, we indicate unaccept-
ability with asterisks, in accordance with Ross’s and Chomsky’s assumption that these
sentences violate structural constraints. But when discussing approaches that attempt to
derive such examples from extragrammatical considerations, we use ‘#’ instead.

Noun complement:
(22) a. They made the claim [ that they know the mayor ].
b. * Whoi did they make the claim [ that they know t i ]?
Chapter 14: Additional properties of A′ -movement 508

(23) a. They mentioned the fact [ that they had met the mayor ].
b. * [ Which public figure ]i did they mention the fact [ that they had met t i ]?

Particularly striking is the contrast between (22b) and (23b) on the one hand and the essentially
synonymous examples in (24) on the other.

(24) a. ✔ Whoi did they claim [ that they know t i ]?

b. ✔ [ Which public figure ]i did they mention [ that they had met t i ]?

It is likewise ungrammatical to move out of a relative clause; this shares the character-
istic with the previous example in that both are instances of attempted extraction out of a CP
embedded inside a DP (though relative clauses and complement clauses have distinct internal
structure).

(25) Relative clause:

a. They met someone [ who knows the president ].
b. * [ Which public figure ]i did they meet someone [ who knows t i ]?

There is no difference based on the strategy of relative clause formation: that relative clauses
likewise are islands for movement:

(26) Relative clause:

a. They met someone [ that knows the president ].
b. * [ Which public figure ]i did they meet someone [ that knows t i ]?

Both relative clauses and noun complement clauses form islands for extraction.

Sentential subjects
A sentential subject is an instance where the subject of a sentence is itself a CP (i.e., a sentence,
hence the name). (27a) gives a basic example of a sentence with a sentential subject (in brackets).
As (27b) shows, it is ungrammatical to extract a wh-phrase from inside a sentential subject.

(27) Sentential subject:

a. [ That they personally know the president ] seems improbable.
b. * Whoi does [ that they personally know t i ] seem improbable?
Chapter 14: Additional properties of A′ -movement 509

Wh-islands
(28) illustrates the island character of indirect questions, a configuration which is often referred
to as a wh-island (because a wh-phrase in the embedded clause appears to turn the embedded
clause into an island). In connection with (28b), it is important to distinguish the two instances
of wh-movement: that of which problem and that of how. Which problem moves from its original
position as complement of solve to the Spec(CP) of the complement clause. It is this movement—
grammatical on its own—that creates an island for any further wh-movement, preventing how
from moving “off island” to the Spec(CP) of the matrix clause.

Word of Caution
Be sure to interpret How in (28b) as modifying the complement verb solve, as indicated
by the trace, not the matrix verb forgotten. In other words, a possible answer to (28b) on
the attempted reading is by Fourier analysis, but not by succumbing to Alzheimer’s.

Indirect question (wh-island):

(28) a. They have forgotten which problemk they should solve t k by Fourier analysis.
b. * Howi have they forgotten which problemk they should solve t k t i ?

Adjunct islands
Finally, we illustrate so-called adjunct islands: it is generally ungrammatical to extract out of a
clause that is an adjunct to the main clause. (29a) shows an example of a bracketed adjunct clause
modifying the main clause. (29b) attempts to question the object from inside the adjunct clause,
but is wholly ungrammatical.

(29) a. The children ate lunch [ while the dogs chased squirrels. ]
b. Whati did the children eat lunch [ while the dogs chased t i ? ]

This is a very high-level summary, and notably, none of these restrictions are explained here.
But they are broadly recognized restrictions/constraints on movement constructions which have
been attested in a broad array of the world’s languages, suggesting that they tell us something
about UG.

14.2.2 Explaining (some) constraints on movement

The field has yet to arrive at a unified explanation for all of the island contexts introduced in
§ 14.2.1 (so it is not clear whether or not there is a unified explanation).5 And in fact, the emerging
picture may in fact be that there is no unifying explanation for the range of islands above: they
may in fact derive from different underlying properties of language. We offer an initial way to
think about them here that point us to some relevant properties of human language, but a full
exploration goes beyond the scope of this textbook.
Chapter 14: Additional properties of A′ -movement 510

Two possible derivations for long-distance wh-movement

When we consider examples of long-distance wh-movement like (14), repeated in (30), two pos-
sible derivations come to mind.

(30) What did he say that they were reading?

On the one hand, the wh-phrase might move in one fell swoop from the position where its the-
matic role is interpreted, however deeply embedded that is, to the sentence-initial Spec(CP) posi-
tion, yielding a wh-movement with a single instance of movement, with one trace and one final
landing site, as in (31).

(31) [CP Whati [IP did he say [CP that [IP they were reading t i ] ] ] ] ?

On the other hand, wh-movement might take place in several steps. The first step takes the moved
constituent from its original position to the nearest Spec(CP), and each subsequent step takes it
to the next higher Spec(CP). This derivation of (30), which involves two steps and involves two
distinct traces of movement, is shown in (32).

(32) [CP Whati [IP did he say [CP t i that [IP they were reading t i ] ] ] ] ?

This kind of derivation of long-distance wh-movement would allow the stable claim that wh-
movement targets the CP domain, but all wh-movements would be relatively local, targeting
their most local CP and moving step-by-step in that way.
Derivations as in (32) are known as cyclic (the idea being that each successively higher CP
forms a separate cycle in the derivation of the entire sentence). Cyclic derivations decompose
apparently nonlocal movement into sequences of local movement. Derivations as in (31), which
do not decompose nonlocal movement, are accordingly known as noncyclic (often described as
movement occurring in one fell swoop, using the English idiom meaning ‘all at once’).

Wh-islands show that wh-movement is cyclic

Given only grammatical instances of long-distance wh-movement like (14)–(15c), repeated here
as (33), it is impossible to decide which of the two alternatives just presented is correct, or even
whether a choice must be made between them. (The parentheses around traces are meant to
annotate the question: does movement go through those positions or not?)

(33) a. [CP Whati did he say [CP (t i ) that they were reading t i ] ] ?
b. [CP Whati does she believe [CP (t i ) that he said [CP (t i ) that they were reading t i ] ] ] ?
c. [CP Whati are they claiming [CP (t i ) that she believes [CP (t i ) that he said [CP (t i ) that
they were reading t i ] ] ] ] ?
d. [CP Whati do you think [CP (t i ) that they are claiming [CP (t i ) that she believes [CP
(t i ) that he said [CP (t i ) that they were reading t i ] ] ] ] ] ?
Chapter 14: Additional properties of A′ -movement 511

However, the existence of syntactic islands forces us to choose the cyclic alternative. For
instance, consider the derivation of the ungrammatical question in (28b), repeated as (34). (Re-
member to interpret how in (34) as modifying solve, not forgotten, as indicated by the trace.)

(34) * Howi have they forgotten [CP which problem they should solve t i ] ?

If wh-movement were able to occur in one fell swoop, there is no obvious reason why long-
distance wh-movement in (34) ought to be ungrammatical. But the ungrammaticality of the
question can be made to follow if we assume that wh-movement is cyclic, moving in multiple
shorter steps through more local positions. The conclusion that the field has reached is that wh-
movement cannot move out of a finite clause without passing through the edge of that clause.6
The idea is that the relevant position where wh-phrases land in the embedded CP is already oc-
cupied in (34), and moving a lower phrase past that position is unacceptable.
The current way this is typically modeled in syntactic theory is to claim that finite CPs are
phases, and phases constitute barriers to movement unless movement occurs through their edge.
Spec,CP is thought of using the metaphor of an “escape hatch”—you can’t just move directly out
of a finite CP, but you can move to its edge and then continue to further move from that edge-
of-CP position. There is a large amount of theoretical work on phases and their predecessors
in the theory (which were called bounding nodes in subjacency, and barriers, in various different
iterations of generative syntactic theory). The key insight, however, is that while it is possible
to move long-distance over multiple CPs, you must use the edge of those CPs as escape hatches:
finite CPs cannot simply be passed over by movement. In the absence of an intermediate landing
site, wh-movement is ruled out as ungrammatical. So the problem with a sentence like (34) is that
how did not move through the edge of the embedded CP.

Relative clauses pose the same problem

Recall the analysis of relative clauses that we proposed in § 14.1: they are wh-constructions in-
volving wh-movement to the edge of the relative clause CP.

(35) a. I was just talking to the friend [CP whok I was visiting t k in Paris ]
b. Wherei was I just talking to the friend [CP whok I was visiting t k t i ]

Our analysis proposed this to also be the case even in relative clauses where wh-phrases
are not overt.

(36) a. I was just talking to the friend [CP ∅who that I was visiting ∅who in Paris ]
b. Wherei was I just talking to the friend [CP ∅who that I was visiting ∅who t i ]

Relative clauses, then, are amenable to an analysis of their island effects based on the same kind
of intervention effect: the typical pathway for moving a wh-element out of a CP is blocked by
another wh-phrase.
Chapter 14: Additional properties of A′ -movement 512

14.2.3 Open questions: explaining other islands

Despite there being a clear logic to the wh-islands being based in a locality constraint, there
are a number of examples of islands that don’t seem to have anything to do with intermediate
wh-phrases blocking movement out of a finite CP.

(37) a. That Katanji like lattes is unsurprising. Sentential subject island

b. * Whatk is that Katanji likes t k unsurprising?
(38) a. Elena cooked dinner after Sonia prepared the ingredients. Adjunct clause island
b. * Whatk did Elena cook dinner after Sonia prepared t k ?

These are examples of constructions that are consistent islands for movement, but which don’t
seem to have anything to do with an intervening wh-element: the embedded CPs (sentential
subject, adjunct) don’t have any other wh-element inside of them. So whatever it is that makes
these islands must be something other than an intermediate wh-phrase blocking of wh-movement
through the edge of that CP.
One idea that has been advanced is that movement is only possible out of an embedded
clause that is complement to the main clause predicate. Adjunct clauses and sentential subjects
are excluded in this instance, as none of them are complements to the main clause predicate.7
But even that doesn’t explain all the remaining instances of islands. The attempted extraction
from a coordinate structure, for example, doesn’t seem to have anything to do with an occupied
Spec,CP blocking an escape hatch, or with moving out of a non-complement CP (these don’t
include crossing CPs at all).

(39) Coordinate structure constraint

a. The students love stories about heroic heroes and about villanous villains.
b. * Whatk do the students love stories about heroic heroes and about t k ?

So while there do appear to be some potential generalizations (locality/minimality problems in-

duced by occupied escape hatches, extraction from non-complements), there are still open ques-
tions.

14.2.4 Takeaway lessons from constraints on movement

So what can we conclude about the properties of A′ -movement more generally? First, it is clear
that A′ -movement can be long distance, though it does appear to proceed cyclically through lo-
cal CP edges. Second, A′ -movement is not unbounded—there are many domains that restrict
movement dependencies out of them; the ultimate source of these island constraints is still under
investigation. But the existence of islands for movement is much too common in the world’s
languages to be a coincidence, suggesting something relatively deep about language and/or cog-
nition that generates them.
Chapter 14: Additional properties of A′ -movement 513

Wh-in-situ: wh-questions without wh-movement 14.3

14.3.1 Wh-scope
For the purposes of this section, it is convenient to introduce the notion of wh-scope. For simplic-
ity, we restrict our attention for the moment to questions, and define the notion as in (40).

(40) Scope refers to the level of structure that an interpretation applies to.

In the context of wh-elements, the scope of a wh-phrase in a question is identifiable with

respect to some full answer to the question. The wh-phrase’s scope in the question is the IP that
corresponds to the root in the full answer.
In (41), the wh-phrases are underlined in red, and their scope is in bold.8

(41) a. Question: Wheni did [IP the visitors arrive t i ] ?

Full answer: [IP The visitors arrived at noon ].
b. Question: Whoi do [IP the parents think that the children saw t i ] ?
Full answer: [IP The parents think that the children saw the teacher ].

Notice a distinct difference with indirect questions, where the scope of the wh-phrase is the em-
bedded clause and not the matrix clause.

(42) a. I wonder why the teachers are so grouchy today.

b. I wonder how they will finish the work.

wh-phrases like why and how in (42) have embedded scope and not matrix scope: the matrix
clause is a declarative statement, so the why question is only interpreted inside and in the context
of the matrix declarative.
It is useful to think of the wh-phrases in (41) and (42) as marking their scope in the sense
that they move from inside their scope to the edge of it. In structural terms, a wh-phrase moves
to the specifier of the lowest projection that dominates its scope. We will refer to this position as
the wh-phrase’s scope-marking position or scope position.

14.3.2 Wh-in situ

In English, wh-phrases generally come to occupy their scope position by wh-movement. In other
languages, however, wh-phrases do not undergo visible wh-movement, but instead remain in
situ (that is, in the position where the wh-phrase enters the derivation of the question, whether
by substitution or adjunction). Such wh-in situ languages include Chinese, Hindi, Korean, and
Japanese, among many others. Example (43) gives the Japanese counterparts of (41).9
Once again, the wh-phrases are underlined in red, and their scope indicated in bold. As is
evident, a wh-phrase in a wh-in situ language is contained within its scope, rather than moving
Chapter 14: Additional properties of A′ -movement 514

to the edge of it. (We assume that the question marker か -ka is the overt counterpart to the silent
complementizer that we have been assuming for English questions; this is why it is represented
outside of the IP, in the clause-final position that is expected given the head-final character of
Japanese phrase structure.)

Extra Info
The abbreviations used in the glosses are: accusative (acc), locative (loc), nominative
(nom), plural (pl), present tense (pRs), question (q), topic (top).

(43) a. Question:
[IP 見学者は いつ 着きました ] か。
[IP kengakusha-wa itsu tsuki-mashita ] ka?
visitor-top when arrive-pst q
‘When did the visitors arrive?’
Full answer:
[IP 見学者は 昼に 着きました ] 。
[IP kengakusha-wa hiru-ni tsuki-mashita ] .
visitor-top noon-at arrive-pst
‘The visitors arrived at noon.’
b. Question:
[IP 両親は 子供たちが 誰を 見た と 思います ] か。
[IP ryōshin-wa kodomo-tachi-ga dare-o mi-ta to omoi-masu ] ka?
parents-top child-pl-nom who-acc see-pst that think-pRs q
‘Who do the parents think that the children saw?’
Full answer:
[IP 両親は 子供たちが 先生を 見た と 思います ] 。
[IP ryōshin-wa kodomo-tachi-ga sensei-o mi-ta to omoi-masu ] .
parents-top child-pl-nom teacher-acc see-pst that think-pRs
‘The parents think that the children saw the teacher.’

The notable point is that all of these wh-phrases do indeed have matrix scope: the main-clause CP
in these instances is has the force of a wh-question. These are not instances where the scope of the
wh-phrase is somehow interpreted as a lower structure: these are matrix questions (main-clause
questions).
Wh-in-situ raises questions for our account thus far. If CPs designated as wh-questions are
identified as such via [+q, +wh], then on our assumptions up until now, wh-phrases ought to
be attracted to Spec,CP; why does that not happen here? As we will see, wh-in-situ opens the
door for us to make another significant theoretical modification within our model. Specifically,
we can start to think of movement not as relocating a constituent, but as adding an additional
representation of that constituent within a syntactic structure.
Chapter 14: Additional properties of A′ -movement 515

A Copy Theory of Movement 14.4

14.4.1 A Copy Theory of Movement for wh-in-situ

Since one aim of generative syntax is to find the most general theory possible that captures
what is shared among all languages, it has been proposed to derive wh-in situ questions by wh-
movement—contrary to superficial appearances. This becomes possible by slightly revising our
ideas about movement. Instead of saying that movement leaves a trace, let us say that movement
is an instance of copying a phrase, and putting that copy in some other position in the structure.
So what we have been representing as in (44a), we can now represent as in (44b).

(44) a. Whatk did the children read t k ?

b. Whatk did the children read whatk ?

(45) Copy Theory of Movement:

Movement in language is an instance where some X◦ or XP is copied and the copy is placed
in some other position in the structure.
a. Copies are placed in higher positions than the original element.
b. As a general rule, only one copy is pronounced.

Under the Copy Theory of Movement, we have to explain why language is not full of the
same XPs repeated over and over again; here we simply stipulate that normally only one copy is
pronounced, but advanced work in syntax has worked out much more precise theories, but are
more detailed than would be helpful for us in an intro textbook.10 One upside of this theory is
that it allows us to readily explain the existence of wh-movement constructions and wh-in-situ
constructions: we can simply say that Universal Grammar allows variation with respect to which
copy is pronounced in a movement operation. In English, it is the highest copy of wh-movement
that is pronounced;11 in wh-in situ languages like Japanese, it is the lowest copy. In what follows,
we indicate silent copies by striking them through.

(46) a. [CP Which movie did [IP the children watch which movie ] ] ?
b. The parents asked [CP which movie [IP the children watched which movie ] ].
(47) a. [CP どの 映画を [IP 子供たちは どの 映画を 見ました ] か ] 。
[CP dono eiga-o [IP kodomo-tachi-wa dono eiga-o mi-mashi-ta ] ka ] .
child-pl-top which movie-acc see-pst q
‘Which movie did the children watch?’
b. 両親は [CP どの 映画を [IP 子供たちが どの 映画を 見た ] か ]
ryōshin-wa [CP dono eiga-o [IP kodomo-tachi-ga dono eiga-o mi-ta ] ka ]
parents-top child-pl-nom which movie-acc see-pst q
Chapter 14: Additional properties of A′ -movement 516

聞いた。
kii-ta.
ask-pst
‘The parents asked which movie the children watched.’

On this approach, both ex situ wh-constructions and in situ wh-constructions are in fact move-
ment constructions. In one, we see the result of the movement overtly in the surface pronuncia-
tion (ex situ); in the other, we don’t see the movement in the pronunciation (in situ).
Therefore, what we have previously considered to be “traces” of movement (annotated as
t) are, under the Copy Theory of Movement, unpronounced copies of moved elements. That said,
many syntacticians often still use traces to annotate trees and examples because they are visually
unobtrusive; in these instances, a trace is therefore interpreted to stand in for an unpronounced
copy of a moved element.

Word of Caution
For convenience, we will continue to use the terms “wh-movement” and “wh-in situ” to
refer to languages, questions, and so on, in which the highest and lowest copies of a wh-
phrase are pronounced, respectively.

14.4.2 Pronouncing multiple copies in wh-movement

Independent evidence in favor of the Copy Theory of Movement comes specific constructions in
specific languages where multiple copies of a single constituent are pronounced. For instance,
some speakers of German reject the examples in (48), while accepting the corresponding wh-
copy questions in (49) as grammatical. These are here marked as % to recognize that they are
not fully grammatical for all German speakers.

(48) a. % [CP Wen glauben die Besucher, [CP dass sie gesehen haben?
who-acc believe the visitors that they seen have
‘Who do the visitors believe that they saw?’
b. % [CP Wen glaubst du, [CP dass Martin meint, [CP dass du magst?
who-acc believe you that Martin thinks that you like
‘Who do you believe that Martin thinks that you like?’
(49) a. % [CP Wen glauben die Besucher, [CP wen sie gesehen haben?
who-acc believe the visitors who-acc they seen have
‘Who do the visitors believe that they saw?’
b. % [CP Wen glaubst du, [CP wen Martin meint, [CP wen du magst?
who-acc believe you who-acc Martin thinks who-acc you like
‘Who do you believe that Martin thinks that you like?’

The overt repetition of the wh-phrase in (49) lends strong support to the idea that wh-
phrases move through Spec(CP) in long-distance movement. In addition, it supports the idea that
grammars can differ as to which copies of movement are pronounced. For the speakers of German
who speak the (49) variety, multiple copies of the moved wh-phrase may be pronounced.
Chapter 14: Additional properties of A′ -movement 517

14.4.3 Partial wh-movement

Certain languages exhibit yet a further variant of wh-movement in which the wh-phrase under-
goes wh-movement, but to a position lower than its scope position. The scope position itself is oc-
cupied by a distinct wh-phrase (generally the language’s counterpart of what). This phenomenon,
known as partial wh-movement, is illustrated for German in (50).12 The true (= contentful) wh-
phrase is underlined in red, and the scope-marking wh-phrase is in blue boldface, which can be
considered a wh-expletive, filling an obligatory position (in German).

(50) a. Was glauben die Besucher, wen ∅dass sie wen gesehen haben?
what believe the visitors who-acc they seen have
‘Who do the visitors believe that they saw?’
b. Was glauben die Besucher, mit wem ∅dass sie mit wem gesprochen haben?
what believe the visitors with who-dat they spoken have
‘Who do the visitors believe that they talked with?’

For comparison, (51) shows the full wh-movement counterparts of (50), where the wh-phrase
functions as a scope marker on its own.13

(51) a. Wen glauben die Besucher, wen ∅dass sie wen gesehen haben?
who-acc believe the visitors they seen have
‘Who do the visitors believe that they saw?’
b. Mit wem glauben die Besucher, mit wem ∅dass sie mit wem gesprochen haben?
with who-dat believe the visitors they spoken have
‘Who do the visitors believe that they talked with?’

The scope of the wh-phrase needs to be indicated in one of the two ways just presented.
The absence of scope marking results in severe ungrammaticality, as shown in (52).

(52) a. * Glauben die Besucher, wen ∅dass sie wen gesehen haben?
believe the visitors who-acc they seen have
Intended meaning: (51a)
b. * Glauben die Besucher, mit wem ∅dass sie mit wem gesprochen haben?
believe the visitors with who-dat they spoken have
Intended meaning: (51b)

14.4.4 Resumptive pronouns as pronunciation of multiple copies

The wh-questions above are not the only instances where we find overt pronominal forms where
we might have expected traces (i.e., unpronounced lower copies) to occur. One classic example
comes from resumptive pronouns. Resumptive pronouns are instances where pronouns occur
where there might otherwise be expected to be a gap.14 (53) gives an example where a pronoun
appears in the expected gap of a relative clause.

(53) There are guests who I am curious about what they are going to say.
Chapter 14: Additional properties of A′ -movement 518

Mainstream U.S. English doesn’t regularly permit sentences like (53), though some speakers
do allow them (including authors of this text). Other languages require them; the resumptive
pronouns are circled in the examples below.

(54) a. Irish (McCloskey 1990)

an ghirseach ar ghoid na síogaí í
the girl comp.pst stole the fairies her
‘the girl who the fairies stole away’
b. Hebrew (Borer 1984)
ha-ʔiš še- raʔ ʔoto
the-man comp see.pst.agR him
‘the man that I saw’

There are a wide variety of analyses of such constructions depending on the language, but
at least one is that the lower pronoun is the pronunciation of the lower copy of the wh-chain. At
the very least, constructions like those in (54) show overtly the validity of an approach that as-
sumes mental representations of syntactic content at the positions where we place unpronounced
copies/traces. This fits broadly with our model assuming consistent argument positions in syn-
tax (UTAH), but it is always nice to find overt confirmation. But it is especially conducive to an
approach like the Copy Theory of Movement, wherein lower copies may either be pronounced
directly (as in the wh-copying constructions above) or pronounced in a reduced pronominal form,
as with resumptive pronouns.

14.4.5 Pronoun copying in A′ -movement

We see additional kinds of patterns crosslinguistically that are likewise readily analyzed as pro-
nunciation of multiple copies in a resumption construction. One example comes from Seereer, an
Atlantic language from the Niger-Congo language family that is spoken in Senegal in West Africa.
Sereer has SVO word order in (neutral) declarative sentences (55). Questions move wh-phrases
to the left periphery (56).

(55) Jegaan a jaw-ʼ-a maalo fe. Seereer

Jegaan 3sbj cook-st-dv rice det
‘Jegaan cooked rice.’ (Baier 2018, 6)
(56) Xari Jegaan a jaw-ʼ-u ti ?
what Jegaan 3sbj cook-pst-ext
‘What did Jegaan cook?’ (Baier 2018, 6)

Baier (2018) glosses the final suffix on verbs as either dv (default vowel) or as ext (for extraction),
which is a form that appears on the verb in the context of A′ -extraction. As Baier notes, the final
suffix -u appears in various sorts of A′ -movement, not just wh-questions.

(57) Final suffix -u

a. Focus fronting: (Baier 2018, 7)
Chapter 14: Additional properties of A′ -movement 519

Maalo Mataar a jaw-u.

rice Mataar 3sbj cook-ext
‘Mataar cooked Rice.’
b. Relative clause: (Baier 2018, 7)
Maalo fe [CP Mataar a ci’-uu-n-a ].
rice det Mataar 3sbj cook-ext-3obj-Rel
‘the rice that Mataar gave him’

Notably, long-distance wh-movement in Seereer leaves visible morphology at the edges of

the CPs that it moves through. Baier calls these pronominal forms Left Edge Resumptives (LERs).
In the examples below we have circled the LERs.

(58) a. Xari xalaat-o [CP yee teni Jegaan a ga’-u t i ]?

what think-2sg.sbj.ext comp 3sg Jegaan 3sbj see-ext
‘What do you think Jegaan saw ?’
b. Xari xalaat-o [CP yee teni Yande a lay-u [CP yee teni Jegaan
what think-2sg.sbj.ext comp 3sg Yande 3sbj say-ext comp 3sg Jegaan
a jaw-u t i ]?
3sbj cook-ext
‘What do you think Yande said Jegaan cooked ?’ (Baier 2018, 12)

Here, we have to assume the kind of complex CPs that we introduced at the end of Chapter 13.
The complementizer yee occupies a head slightly higher than the position that wh-phrases move
through.
As Baier demonstrates, different kinds of wh-phrases leave different kinds of LERs, includ-
ing maaga ‘where’, neen ‘how’, and den ‘who (pl)’.

(59) a. Tami a xalaat-u [CP yee *(maagai ) ret-o t i ]?

where 3sbj think-ext comp leR go-2sg.sbj.ext
‘Where does he think you went?’
b. Nami xalaat-o [CP yee *(neeni ) otew oxe a war-u acek
how think-2sg.sbj.ext comp leR woman det 3sbj kill-2sg.sbj.ext chicken
ale t i ]?
det
‘How do you think the woman killed the chicken?’ (Baier 2018, 14)

(60) Aniini foog-o [CP yee *(deni ) ndet-u Dakar t i ]?

who.pl think-2sg.sbj.ext comp leR.3pl go.pl-ext Dakar
‘Who all do you think went to Dakar?’ (Baier 2018, 14)

Several things are notable here. One, these are instances where the putative lower copies
of the wh-phrase are not produced in their exact form, but are instead realized as pronominal re-
sumptives. And in long-distance movement, these copies are again exactly where we expect to see
traces of movement if long-distance movement occurs successive-cyclicly through the left edge
Chapter 14: Additional properties of A′ -movement 520

of CPs. Here we assume a slightly more complex CP, with projections both for the yee comple-
mentizer and also below that for wh-phrases to move through, but this fits with our expectations
of a decompositional CP (see § 13.6 of Chapter 13).
Baier (2018) argues that these are in fact movement constructions: they are prohibited out
of islands. This is demonstrated for an adjunct island in (61) and a relative clause in (62).

(61) Adjunct island:

* Xari ret-o Dakar [CP balaa teni Jegaan a jik-u t i ]?
what go-2sg.sbj.ext Dakar before leR Jegaan 3sbj buy-ext
Intended ‘What did you go to Dakar before Jegaan bought ?’ (Baier 2018, 18)

(62) Complex noun phrase:

* Xari ga’-o [DP otew oxe [CP teni jik-na t i ]]?
what see-2sg.sbj.ext woman det 3sg buy-CRel
Intended: ‘What did you see the woman who bought ?’ (Baier 2018, 18)

14.4.6 Child English

Although adult Mainstream US English exhibits neither wh-copy questions or partial wh-
movement, both types of questions have been reported for child English (Thornton 1995, 187),
as illustrated in (63) and (64).

(63) a. Who do think who Grover wants to hug?

b. Who do you think who’s in there, really, really, really?
(64) a. What do you think what Cookie Monster eats?
b. What do you think what the baby drinks?

Interpreting these effects is not straightforward, of course: how/why do children mistak-

enly do this? It is only a mistake, of course, because the adult English they are learning doesn’t
possess such structures. But linguists take the emergence of such structures in child language to
show what kinds of grammatical hypotheses children are entertaining for their languages. The
occasional use of such structures by English-learning children—even when it is not in the adult
English they are learning from—suggests that something about UG and/or human cognition is 1)
inclined to put wh-phrases at intermediate stages of movement, and 2) includes multiple copies
of wh-phrases in the mental grammatical representation of wh-questions.
So it is notable that the precise position that wh-copies show up in (non-adult-like) child
speech is precisely the same structural positions where they appear cross-linguistically, which is
precisely the position that we think intermediate movement steps of long-distance wh-movement
targets: Spec,CP of the embedded CPs. Not all languages repeat their wh-phrases, but when we
do see it, we see it precisely in the position that our model posits as an escape hatch for moving
out of finite CPs.
 Chapter 14: Additional properties of A′ -movement 521

New Empirical Observations

▶ relative clauses share A′ -properties with other kinds of A′ -movement

▶ there are constraints on movement, even apparent long-distance movement. These
constraints are called islands
▷ noun complement clauses
▷ relative clauses
▷ indirect questions (wh-islands)
▷ coordinate structures
▷ sentential subjects
▷ adjunct clauses
▶ wh-in-situ
▶ some languages have constructions in which multiple copies of wh-elements are
realized (wh-copying and resumption)

Components of the Theoretical Model

▶ phases explain some aspects of islands

▷ CP is a phase
▷ DP is a phase
▷ movement out of a phase occurs through the specifier of the phase (an “escape
hatch”)
▶ Copy Theory of Movement

Notes 14.5
1. The that counterpart to (3e) is missing; it would look as in (i).

(i) the friend ’s parents that you met

The intended interpretation is as in (3e). In other words, (i) might go on as in (ii.a), but not as in (ii.b), where the
relative clause is that you met, not the intended ’s parents that you met.

(ii) a. The friend [ ’s parents that you met ] is coming over for dinner.
b. The friend’s parents [ that you met ] are coming over for dinner.

2. Once again, the counterpart to (3e) is missing for reasons analogous to those in Note 1; just delete that in the examples
there.

3. (65)–(68) give further examples from several varieties of English, classified by linguistic environment.
 Chapter 14: Additional properties of A′ -movement 522

(65) Existential there clause:

a. There’s a shortcut takes you to the shops. (Henry 1995, 125)
b. “Thanks for the hurricane, there’s a hundred fifty thousand houses in Dade County need new roofs”,
he began. (Hiaasen 1995, 110–111)
c. … it might be worthwhile to mention that there’s a train leaves Pangbourne, I know, soon after five
… (Jerome 1889, 207)
(66) It cleft:
a. It was John told us about it. (Henry 1995, 125)
b. ’Tis grace hath brought me safe thus far (“Amazing Grace”)
c. It was the quickness of the hand deceived the eye. (Jerome 1889, 221)
(67) Copular construction:
a. John is the person could help you with that. (Henry 1995, 125)
b. You’re the second guy this month wants to take out trade in this bizzare fashion. (Wagner 1986, 119)
c. He’s the one inspected the damn things. (Hiaasen 1995, 5)
(68) Introduction of discourse entity in object position:
a. I met a man can speak five languages. (Henry 1995, 125)
b. how come we have … a pink-haired punk granddaughter got the manners of a terrorist? … Wears
somethin’ makes the garage door flap up? (Wagner 1986, 81)

4. Ross (1967) treated relative clauses together with noun complement clauses, subsuming the noun phrases containing
them under the category of complex noun phrases. We follow more modern treatments by distinguishing the two
cases.

5. Boeckx (2012) makes this clear, and to our estimation no conclusions in the field since then have changed this
conclusion.

6. Chomsky arrived at and modified this conclusion a number of times over a wide range of work, ex., Chomsky (1973),
Chomsky (1977), Chomsky (1986a), and Chomsky (2001)).

7. For discussion of these approaches, see Huang (1982) and Stepanov (2007).

8. In questions with a single wh-phrase, the scope of the wh-phrase coincides with the question’s ground (recall the
discussion of it clefts in Chapter 3, § 3.1.4). However, the notions of scope and ground aren’t identical, as they don’t
coincide in more complicated questions with multiple wh-phrases (questions of the type Who saw what?).

9. In Japanese, subjects and topics of sentences are marked by が -ga and は -wa, respectively. Topics are generally
restricted to matrix clauses. When subjects function as topics, as they often do, topic marking overrides subject
marking (in other words, the sentence contains no ga-marked phrase). When nominative case marking is at issue,
linguists use subordinate clauses to avoid the masking effect of topic marking, but we are not interested in case
marking here, so we are free to use matrix clauses.

10. A prominent example of work about which copies are realized in a movement chain is Nunes (2004); for a curious
student, that is a good place to start.

11. Even languages that ordinarily require wh-movement allow wh-in situ under certain circumstances. For instance,
English echo questions commonly exhibit wh-in situ (see Chapter 8 for examples), and all but one wh-phrase is
required to remain in situ in English multiple wh-questions like (i).

(i) a. Who who saw what?

b. * Who what who saw what?
 Chapter 14: Additional properties of A′ -movement 523

12. A classic reference for partial wh-movement is McDaniel (1989), which discusses the phenomenon in German and
Romani. Lutz, Müller, and Stechow (2000) is a collection of papers providing a cross-linguistic survey of partial
wh-movement and wh-scope marking more generally.

13. As noted in the previous section, not all German speakers accept long-distance wh-movement as in (48).

14. The example in (53) is from McCloskey (2017), who cites Prince (1990), who attributed the examples to Tony Kroch,
an author of this text. This section is being authored after his passing so we can’t confirm these with the source,
though they are also grammatical for Diercks.

Exercises and problems 14.6

Exercise 14.1: Basic practice with relative clauses
Draw trees of the noun phrases in (1), all of which contain relative clauses. You can draw triangles
over DPs, PPs, and AdvPs contained inside the relative clauses.

(1) a. the dog that I saw this morning

b. the student who arrived in the classroom first
c. the server who brought us the menus
d. the coffee shop where I work
e. the ex-boyfriend that I really need to call
f. the car which I hit
g. the tree that I planted

Exercise 14.2: Basic practice with relative clauses: pied-piping

Build structures for the noun phrases in (1).

(1) a. the house [ in which you live ]. (pied piping)

b. the house [ which you live in ]. (preposition stranding)
Chapter 14: Additional properties of A′ -movement 524

Exercise 14.3: Practice with islands for movement

The example in (1) is a simple object question, which we have analyzed as movement of the
wh-phrase from the complement of the verb to Spec,CP.

(1) Who did the children visit ?

If this is an instance of syntactic movement, we expect it to be constrained by islands for

movement. Construct sentences that show that the dependency between the wh-phrase and a
gap are in fact movement using islands for movement. For each of the islands in (2), invent an
attempted wh-question similar to (1) which places the gap (the base position of the wh-phrase)
inside an island. If done precisely, the resulting sentences will all be ungrammatical in English
(but you can do this without being a native speaker of English; if anything, it might be easier
without native speaker judgments interfering).

(2) a. wh-island
b. complex DP island (noun complement clauses, relative clauses)
c. adjunct island
d. coordinate structure
e. sentential subjunct

We model one example of a wh-island in (3). Here the pronounced wh-phrase is in the ma-
trix clause, but its base position is inside an island for movement (a CP with a wh-phrase already
in its specifier). The result is ungrammatical, which is what is expected for wh-movement.

(3) * Who do you wonder [CP why the children visited ]?

Come up with another kind of wh-island for your answers above, and also come up with
examples of the other islands, using the discussion in the chapter for guidance. The goal is to
practice constructing islands for diagnostic purposes, because islands are often used to diagnose
whether a syntactic dependency behaves like movement or not.

Exercise 14.4: Using islands for analytical purposes

According to the analysis of relative clauses presented in this chapter, that relative clauses like
(1) have the structure in (2a). But since the wh-phrase is silent, an alternative analysis is possi-
ble in principle, according to which the wh-phrase remains in its original position, as shown in
(2b).

(1) the people that you met

(2) a. the people [CP whoi that [IP you met t i ] ] (movement)
b. the people [CP that [IP you met whoi ] ] (no movement)

Consider the evidence given in (3). Based on this evidence, which analysis in (2) is prefer-
able? Explain. We use trace notation to represent the interpreted position of the location phrase.
So the sentence is grammatical if asking where the visit occurred, but ungrammatical if asking
where the original meeting occurred.
Chapter 14: Additional properties of A′ -movement 525

(3) a. Wherek did you visit t k the people that you met?
b. * Wherek did you visit the people that you met t k ?

Exercise 14.5: Structural ambiguities with relative clauses

A. The noun phrase (1) is structurally ambiguous. Paraphrase or otherwise distinguish be-
tween the two interpretations.

(1) the cat that ate the rat that ate the cheese

B. Build the structure for the first relative clause, the unambiguous portion (the cat that ate
the rat).
C. Build structures for the two interpretations, indicating clearly which structure goes with
which interpretation. For simplicity, you can use triangle notation for the relative clauses.

Exercise 14.6: Ambiguity of embedded clauses

A. Build structures for the two readings of (1).

(1) What would you like the power to do?

B. Briefly explain how your structures from (A) are consistent with subjacency.

Exercise 14.7: Complex embeddings

The following quote (from The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie) exists in several different forms. The
one in (1) is the most abstruse.

(1) It’s the kind of thing that people who like that kind of thing like.
A. Build the full structure for the relative clause who like that kind of thing. Here and through-
out, assume for simplicity that of phrases are complements.
B. Build the structure for the relative clause that people who like that kind of thing like. Use
triangle notation for the embedded relative clause that you’ve already built in (A).
C. Build the structure for the remainder of the sentence (that is, for the matrix sentence ex-
cluding both relative clauses).
D. Describe how the structures in (A)–(C) fit together.
Chapter 14: Additional properties of A′ -movement 526

Exercise 14.8: Structural ambiguity with relative clauses

The sentences in (1) and (2) are structurally ambiguous. Build partial structures for them, as indi-
cated by the slashes, and explain how those structures fit together to yield the various readings.
Focus on the intended reading and the most salient funny reading, but feel free to address other
unintended readings as well.
In (2), you will need to come up with a structure for the gerund clause introduced by meet-
ing by extending material covered in Chapter 11.
Treat freak accident, North Koreans and Oval Office as single words.

(1) Gibson plays a man

/ who develops the ability to understand
/ what women are thinking
/ after a freak accident.
(Source: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0207201/news?year=2000, accessed 18 March
2012)
(2) I remember meeting a mother of a child
/ who was abducted by the North Koreans
/ right here
/ in the Oval Office.
(Source: https://www.slate.com/id/76886/, accessed 8 April 2010)

Problem 14.1: Locality of movement in relative clauses

Consider the sentence in (1a) and the simplified subpart of it in (1b).

(1) a. Already Agassiz had become interested in the rich stores of the extinct fishes of Eu-
rope, especially those of Glarus in Switzerland and of Monte Bolca near Verona, of
which at that time, only a few had been critically studied.
(Encyclopædia Britannica Online, Agassiz, (Jean) Louis (Rodolphe). Accessed 27 Au-
gust 1999.)
b. the fishes of Europe, of which only a few had been studied
A. Does the relative clause in (1b) respect our islands for movement, or is this an exceptional
instance? Explain.
B. Is of Europe a complement or an adjunct of fishes? How can you tell?
C. Does had in (1b) undergo V-to-I raising? How can you tell?
Chapter 14: Additional properties of A′ -movement 527

Problem 14.2: An English relative clause variant

Build the full structure for the noun phrase in (1). For the purposes of this exercise, treat has as
a modal.

(1) a product that’s time has come

Hint: Some speakers have reanalyzed that in relative clauses as a relative pronoun instead of a
complementizer.

Problem 14.3: Relative clauses with nonfinite clauses

Provide as insightful a description of the following facts as you can. What patterns do you notice?
Can you state any generalizations?

(1) a. ✔ a person who we can hire

b. ✔ a person with whom we can consult
c. ✔ a person who(m) we can consult with
d. ✔ a person who can fix the sink

(2) a. * a person who to hire

b. ✔ a person with whom to consult
c. ✔ a person who(m) to consult with
d. * a person who to fix the sink

(3) a. ✔ a person that we can hire

b. * a person with that we can consult
c. ✔ a person that we can consult with
d. ✔ a person that can fix the sink

(4) a. ? a person for us to hire

b. * a person with for us to consult
c. ? a person for us to consult with
d. % a person for to fix the sink

(5) a. ✔ a person we can hire

b. * a person with we can consult
c. ✔ a person we can consult with
d. % a person can fix the sink

(6) a. * a person us to hire

b. * a person with us to consult
c. * a person us to consult with

(7) a. ✔ a person to hire

Chapter 14: Additional properties of A′ -movement 528

b. * a person with to consult

c. ✔ a person to consult with
d. ✔ a person to fix the sink

Problem 14.4: Swahili relative clauses

The data in this problem include data from and adapted from Ngonyani (1999), Keach (1980), and
Edelsten, Kula, and Marten (2010).
The textbook gives analyses for multiple types of relative clauses in English, those with relative
pronouns and those with a complementizer:

a. the movie which I am seeing this weekend

b. the movie that I am seeing this weekend

Like English, Swahili has multiple strategies for forming relative clauses, which have an influence
on word order and agreement facts.

Task:
1. Come up with a clear statement of what the puzzle is, i.e., a description of the Swahili
relative clause facts, and what needs to be explained.
2. Provide an analysis that solves the puzzle.
3. Draw trees for the DPs containing relative clauses in (1c) and in (1e).
4. There are multiple analyses possible that both fit our data and fit our theory. If you no-
tice more than one possible analysis, you can describe them both, but you may not have
sufficient data to distinguish between them.

Notes:
▶ Rel = relative agreement ; sa = subject agreement, oa = object agreement, pst = past tense;
fut = future tense; numerals = noun classes
▶ Do not be concerned at present with explaining the presence of object agreement (oa). We
will address these kinds of constructions later on in the semester, but at present, assume that
oa comes in on V with the verb root.
▶ The future tense in Swahili has two allomorphs (-ta- and -taka-) – you are not responsible
for explaining their distribution: it’s a purely morphological process.
▶ Assume that subject agreement arises on Infl. This is the result of unvalued features on Infl
being valued by the subject.
▶ Some of the examples here include full sentences, some are just DPs. But most contain DPs
with relative clauses. Because you are only responsible for analyzing the relative clauses
here, be sure that you focus your investigation properly.
▶ Class 16 is a locative noun class agreement, agreeing with a locative DP.
Chapter 14: Additional properties of A′ -movement 529

(1) a. Wa-vulana wa-ta-i-nunua pombe hapa.

2-boys 2sa-fut-9oa-buy 9beer 16here
‘The boys will buy beer here.’
b. wa-vulana amba-o wa-ta-i-nunua pombe hapa
2-boys amba-2Rel 2sa-fut-9oa-buy 9beer 16here
‘the boys who will buy beer here’
c. pombe amba-yo wa-vulana wa-ta-i-nunua hapa
9beer amba-9Rel 2-boys 2sa-fut-9oa-buy loc16
‘the beer which the boys will buy here’
d. * pombe wa-vulana wa-taka-yo-i-nunua hapa
9beer 2-boys 2sa-fut-9Rel-9oa-buy loc16
‘the beer which the boys will buy here’
e. pombe wa-taka-yo-i-nunua wa-vulana hapa
9beer 2sa-fut-9Rel-9oa-buy 2-boys loc16
‘the beer which the boys will buy here’
(2) a. M-geni a-li-ona gari.
1-guest 1sa-pst-see 5car
‘The guest saw a car.’
b. gari a-li-lo-ona m-geni
5car 1sa-pst-5Rel-see 1-guest
‘the car that the guest saw’
c. * gari m-geni a-li-lo-ona
5car 1-guest 1sa-pst-5Rel-see
d. gari amba-lo m-geni a-li-ona
5car amba-5Rel 1-guest 1sa-pst-see
‘the car that the guest saw’
(3) a. M-tu a-li-kwenda.
person 1sa-pst-go
‘The person went.’
b. m-tu amba-ye a-li-kwenda
person amba-1Rel 1sa-pst-go
‘the person that went.’
c. m-tu a-li-ye-kwenda
person 1sa-pst-1Rel-go
‘the person that went.’
(4) a. Mw-alimu a-li-wa-somea wa-nafunzi ki-tabu.
1-teacher 1sa-pst-2oa-read.to 2-students 7-book
‘The teacher read the book to the students.’
b. ki-tabu a-li-cho-wa-somea mw-alimu wa-nafunzi
7-book 1sa-pst-7Rel-2oa-read.to 1-teacher 2-students
‘The book that the teacher read to the students’
Chapter 14: Additional properties of A′ -movement 530

c. * ki-tabu amba-cho a-li-wa-somea mw-alimu wa-nafunzi

7-book amba-7Rel 1sa-pst-2oa-read.to 1-teacher 2-students
‘The book that the teacher read to the students’
d. * ki-tabu mw-alimu a-li-cho-wa-somea wa-nafunzi
7-book 1-teacher 1sa-pst-7Rel-2oa-read.to 2-students
‘The book that the teacher read to the students’
(5) a. vi-tunguu wa-li-vyo-vi-nunua wa-talii soko-ni
8-onions 2sa-pst-8Rel-8oa-buy 2-tourists 9market-loc
‘the onions which the tourists bought in the market’
b. Soko-ni pa-li-po-jaa wa-tu pa-li-kuwa mji-ni
5market-loc 16sa-pst-16Rel-be.full 2-people 16sa-pst-be 3town-loc
‘The market that was full of people was in the town.’
c. Soko-ni tu-li-po-kwenda pa-li-jaa wa-tu
5market-loc 1plsa-pst-16Rel-go 16sm-pst-be.full 2-people
‘The market that we went to was full of people.’
d. vi-tunguu amba-vyo ni-li-vi-nunua soko-ni
8-onions amba-8Rel 1sgsa-pst-8oa-buy 9market-loc
‘the onions which I bought in the market’
e. hapa amba-po wa-vulana wa-ta-pa-nunua bia
here16 amba-16Rel 2-boys 2sa-fut-16oa-buy 9beer
‘here where the boys will buy beer’

Problem 14.5: Lopit questions

Data here are drawn from Moodie and Billington (2021).
Lopit is a Nilotic language spoken in South Sudan. The canonical word order in Lopit is VSO.
This problem set explores the properties of questions in Lopit. This problem set can be completed
on its own, but Exercise 12.3 in Chapter 12 has additional relevant data.
A. Based on the data in (1), arrive at an initial analysis of the basic word order of Lopit.
B. Examine the Lopit questions in (2), and come to an analysis of yes/no questions and wh-
questions. Draw trees of (2a) and (3a).
C. Explain what outstanding questions these data raise (if any) for your analysis.
Notes:
▶ You can take note of the inflection on verbal forms and it can factor into your outstanding
questions, but you don’t have to shape your whole analysis around it. Case is glossed on
noun phrases but you do not have to explain it at all (it is its own separate puzzle).
▶ Some glosses are simplified from the original source for the purposes of this assignment.
▶ Glossing notes: ipfv = imperfective aspect (an ongoing event); pfv = perfective aspect (a
completed event); nom = nominative case; abs = absolutive case; peR = persistive affix; agR
= agreement affix; agR = agreement; sg = singular; pl = plural; q = question marker; seq =
sequential marker; sbo = subordinate marker; comp = complementizer; neg = negation
Chapter 14: Additional properties of A′ -movement 531

Basic word order in Lopit

(1) a. Ɛ-ɪ̀lːá xɔ́tːɔ́ɲɪ́ ɪ̀ŋɛ̂.
agR-wash.ipfv mother.nom baby.abs
‘The mother washes the baby.’ (256)
b. Á-lâ-dáxá náŋ ŋìɾìjà.
agR-peR-eat 1sg.nom food.abs
‘I’m still eating food.’
c. Ɔ́-xɔ́ɲ mùnù xɪ̀ŋɔ̀ xʊ̂.
agR-bite snake.nom dog.abs
‘The snake bit the dog.’
d. É-xì-rjè ɪ́ɲɛ́ mùnù.
agR-pfv-tread.on 3sg.nom snake.abs
‘He trod on a snake.’
e. É-jːò xítò.
agR-cry.ipfv child.nom
‘The child is crying.’
f. Á-ísó náŋ ìjè bùk.
agR-give 1sg.nom 2sg.abs book.abs
‘I give you the book.’

Questions in Lopit
(2) a. Aí-wòló náŋ ìjè ŋɔ̀ lɛ́ʔ.
agR-see.pfv 1sg.nom 2sg.abs yesterday
‘I saw you yesterday.’
b. X-aí-wòló náŋ ìjè ŋɔ̀ lɛ́ʔ?
q-agR-see.pfv 1sg.nom 2sg.abs yesterday
‘Did I see you yesterday?’
c. X-í-mòr íjé nàŋ?
q-agR-insult.N 2sg.nom 1sg.abs
‘Did you insult me?’
(3) a. X-ɪ-ígɛ́m-á íjé ɲò?
q-agR-work-ipfv 2sg.nom what
‘What are you doing?’
b. X-ì-fíjá íjé ɲò?
q-agR-clean-ipfv 2sg.nom what
‘What are you cleaning?’
c. X-a-ísjéɾé náŋ ŋaì dómí?
q-agR-give 1sg.nom who knife.abs
‘To whom did I give the knife?’
Chapter 14: Additional properties of A′ -movement 532

Problem 14.6: Finite complement clauses

At first glance, the structure in (1a) seems preferable to that in (1b) on the grounds that it is simpler
in the sense of postulating fewer nodes. It is standardly argued, however, that the structure in
(1b) with a silent complementizer is preferable. Provide evidence for the standard view.

(1) a. They believe [IP we have read War and Peace ].

b. They believe [CP ∅that [IP we have read War and Peace ] ].

Problem 14.7: Preposing though in English

This exercise extends Exercise 8.7 in Chapter 8. Refer to that exercise for information concerning
though preposing.
A. The examples in (1)—and in particular, the though clauses—are completely acceptable. (The
remaining material is given to provide context; it should be ignored for the purposes of the
exercise.)

(1) a. ✔ Though I wonder why the problem seems difficult, my friends don’t wonder—
they know exactly.
b. ✔ Though the students enjoy problems which are difficult, they can’t always
solve them completely.

But the corresponding though preposing variants in (2) are not.

(2) a. * Difficult though I wonder why the problem seems, …

b. * Difficult though the students enjoy problems which are, …

Explain the ill-formedness of the though clauses in (2) in terms of islands for movement.
B. Given our expectations about islands for movement, is the acceptability judgment for (3b)
expected? Explain.

(3) a. Though we regret that the problem seems difficult, we will assign it anyway.
b. * Difficult though we regret that the problem seems, …
Chapter 14: Additional properties of A′ -movement 533

Problem 14.8: Japanese focus particle -koso

The following problem and its data are adapted from Sano (2000).
One of the functions of the particle こそ -koso in Japanese is to express contrastive focus, such
as in the following sentence.

(1) 太郎は 藍子に [CP 女子学生と お茶こそ 飲んだ と ] 言った

Tarō-wa Aiko-ni [CP joshi-gakusei-to ocha-koso non-da to ] it-ta
Tarō-top Aiko-dat [CP female-student-with tea-foc drink-pst c ] say-pst
けれども、 お酒を 飲んだ とは 言わなかった。
keredomo, osake-o non-da to-wa iw-anakat-ta.
though sake-acc drink-pst c-top say-neg-pst
‘Though Tarō said to Aiko that he drank tea with a female student, he didn’t say that he
drank sake.’

In this sentence, -koso serves to emphasize the contrast between Tarō telling Aiko he drank
tea and Tarō telling Aiko he drank sake. In English, we would say the same sentence with extra
stress (indicated by underline) on the word ‘tea’; notice that -koso attaches precisely to its Japanese
equivalent お茶 ocha.
This function of -koso is licensed by a concessive conjunction like けれども -keredomo and
が -ga ‘but, although’. In (1), this licensing extends across a CP boundary. In fact, this licensing
can even extend across two CP boundaries, as in (2).

(2) 僕は [CP 太郎が 藍子に [CP 女子学生と お茶こそ 飲んだ と ]

Boku-wa [CP Tarō-ga Aiko-ni [CP joshi-gakusei-to ocha-koso non-da to ]
I-top [CP Tarō-nom Aiko-dat [CP female-student-with tea-foc drink-pst c ]
言った と ] 思う けれども、 お酒を 飲んだ と 言った とは 思わない。
it-ta to ] omou keredomo, osake-o non-da to it-ta to-wa omow-anai.
say-pst c ] think though sake-acc drink-pst c say-pst c-top think-neg
‘Though I think Tarō said to Aiko that he drank tea with a female student, I don’t think
he said that he drank sake.’

However, the -koso-concessive licensing relationship doesn’t extend across all kinds of syn-
tactic boundaries. Consider the data below and answer the following questions:
A. What other syntactic phenomenon have we seen that features long-distance relationships
like this one?
B. For each example sentence in (3)–(5), name the boundary that the -koso-concessive licens-
ing relationship fails to extend across.
C. What other phenomenon have we seen that parallels the inability of -keredomo to license
-koso in (3)–(5)?
D. What important difference exists between the phenomena named in (A) and (D) and the
phenomena observed with -koso here?
Chapter 14: Additional properties of A′ -movement 534

(3) ?* 太郎は 藍子に [DP 女子学生と お茶こそ 飲んだ 事実を ] 話した

Tarō-wa Aiko-ni [DP joshi-gakusei-to ocha-koso non-da jijitsu-o ] it-ta
Tarō-top Aiko-dat [DP female-student-with tea-foc drink-pst fact ] tell-pst
けれども、 お酒を 飲んだ ことは 話さなかった。
keredomo, osake-o non-da koto-wa hanas-anakat-ta.
though sake-acc drink-pst thing-top tell-neg-pst
‘Though Tarō told Aiko (the fact) that he drank tea with a female student, he didn’t tell
her that he drank sake with the student.’
(4) * 太郎は [CP 次郎と お茶こそ 飲む ] 女子学生を 見た
Tarō-wa [CP Jirō-to ocha-koso nom-u ] joshi-gakusei-o mi-ta
Tarō-top [CP Jirō-with tea-foc drink-npst ] female-student-acc see-pst
けれども、 お酒を 飲む 女子学生は 見なかった。
keredomo, osake-o nom-u joshi-gakusei-wa mi-nakat-ta.
though sake-acc drink-npst female-student-top see-neg-pst
‘Though Tarō saw a female student who drinks tea with Jirō, he didn’t see a female
student who drinks sake.’
(5) * 太郎は [CP 誰と お茶こそ 飲んだ か ] 言った けれども、 誰と
Tarō-wa [CP dare-to ocha-koso non-da ka ] it-ta keredomo, dare-to
Tarō-top [CP who-with tea-foc drink-pst q ] say-pst though sake-acc
お酒を 飲んだ とは 言わなかった。
osake-o non-da to-wa iw-anakat-ta.
drink-pst thing-top say-neg-pst
‘Though Tarō said who he drank tea with, he didn’t say who he drank sake with.’

Problem 14.9: Hungarian word order

Hungarian is a Uralic language spoken in Hungary.
A. Read over the data and data descriptions below.
B. Propose a structure explaining the core word order patterns described here about the nature
of the preverbal subject position in Hungarian.
C. Draw a tree structure for (1) and (2a).
Given the small data set, there are a variety of solutions that are consistent with the data. Be
as precise as you can, given the data, but there may be multiple viable analyses that you cannot
decide between.
Chapter 14: Additional properties of A′ -movement 535

Hungarian data patterns

Example (1) gives a Hungarian sentence with so-called neutral order.1

(1) Emöke látta Attilá-t tegnap este.

saw -acc yesterday evening
‘Emöke saw Attila last night.’

In such neutral sentences, which are felicitous as answers to the question What happened?, the
subject occupies clause-initial position and precedes the verb. By contrast, in wh-questions like
(2), the clause-initial position is occupied by the wh-phrase, and the subject follows the finite
verb.

(2) a. Ki-t látott Emöke tegnap este?

who-acc saw yesterday evening
‘Who(m) did Emöke see last night?’
b. Mikor látta Emöke Attilá-t?
when saw -acc
‘When did Emöke see Attila?’

It is noteworthy that answers to such questions preserve the constituent order of the ques-
tion when the answer is intended as an exhaustive answer to the question. In fact, under such an
interpretation, the variant without subject-verb inversion is ungrammatical.

(3) a. Attilá-t látta Emöke tegnap este.

-acc saw yesterday evening
‘Emöke saw Attila (and no one else) last night.’
b. Tegnap este látta Emöke Attilá-t.
yesterday evening saw -acc
‘Emöke saw Attila last night (and only then).’
(4) a. * Attilá-t Emöke látta tegnap este.
b. * Tegnap este Emöke látta Attilá-t.

It is ungrammatical to ask a question when other material appears before the verb.

(5) a. * Ki-t tegnap este látta Emöke?

who-acc yesterday evening saw
Intended meaning: ‘Who(m) did Emöke see last night?’
b. * Mikor Attilá-t látta Emöke?
when -acc saw
Intended meaning: ‘When did Emöke see Attila?’

Consider the examples below as well, paying particular attention to the word order in the em-
bedded clauses. (Hungarian is a so-called null subject language, so the subjects of finite clauses
can be silent, as they are in the matrix clauses in the following examples.)
Chapter 14: Additional properties of A′ -movement 536

(6) a. Azt mondják, hogy Attilá-t látta Emöke tegnap este.

it say.3pl that -acc saw yesterday evening
‘They say (it) that Emöke saw (only) Attila last night.’
b. Azt mondják, hogy tegnap este látta Emöke Attilá-t.
it say.3pl that yesterday evening saw -acc
‘They say (it) that Emöke saw Attila last night (only).’
(7) a. Azt kérdeztük, hogy Attilá-t látta-e Emöke tegnap este.
it asked.1pl that -acc saw-q yesterday evening
‘We asked (it) whether Emöke saw (only) Attila last night.’
b. Azt kérdeztük, hogy tegnap este látta-e Emöke Attilá-t.
it asked.1pl that yesterday evening saw-q -acc
‘We asked (it) whether Emöke saw Attila last night (only).’
(8) a. Azt kérdeztük, hogy ki-t látott Emöke tegnap este.
it asked.1pl that who-acc saw yesterday evening
‘We asked (it) who(m) Emöke saw last night.’
b. Azt kérdeztük, hogy mikor látta Emöke Attilá-t.
it asked.1pl that when saw -acc
‘We asked (it) when Emöke saw Attila.’
 15
Binding theory

Chapter outline
15.1 Reference and related notions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 538
15.1.1 Reference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 538
15.1.2 Coreference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 539
15.1.3 Coindexing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 539
15.2 The puzzle: restrictions on coreference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 540
15.3 Reintroducing c-command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 541
15.4 Chomsky’s (1981) Binding Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 544
15.4.1 Principle A . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 544
15.4.2 Principle B . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 548
15.4.3 Principle C . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 549
15.5 Binding Theory as a diagnostic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 551
15.5.1 Ditransitives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 552
15.5.2 Distinguishing movement types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 555
15.6 Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 557
15.7 Exercises and problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 557

This chapter is devoted to binding theory, the part of syntactic theory that is concerned with
how the interpretation of anaphoric noun phrases is constrained by syntactic considerations. For
the purposes of binding theory, it is useful to distinguish several types of noun phrases: full noun
phrases (the question, the student that asked the question, and so on), ordinary pronouns (I, you,
they, and so on), reflexive pronouns (myself, yourself, themselves, and so on) and reciprocal
pronouns (each other).
We begin by presenting background concepts concerning reference and related notational
conventions. We then summarize the predominant approach to conditions on coreference be-
tween pronouns, reflexives, and referential noun phrases: Chomsky’s (1981) Binding Theory,
reviewing c-command and then addressing Principles A, B, and C. We conclude by discussing
ways in which Binding Theory is useful diagnostically to understand unrelated patterns in syn-
tax.
Chapter 15: Binding theory 538

Reference and related notions 15.1

15.1.1 Reference
The preeminent function of noun phrases like Benjamin Franklin, my two cats, the king of France,
Santa Claus, or colorless green ideas is to refer—that is, to stand for a particular entity, the refer-
ent. As the examples show, referents can be entities in the actual world, entities in some possible
world, or even entities that could not possibly exist in principle. One of the characteristic features
of human language is the absence, in general, of a one-to-one relation between noun phrases and
referents. On the one hand, it is possible to use different noun phrases to refer to the same refer-
ent. The classic example for this is the fact that the expressions the morning star and the evening
star both have the same referent, the planet Venus (which is not a star at all!). Some families
are nickname rich, so the same person could be referred to by a variety of names (e.g. one per-
son could be legally named Abigail but also called Abby, Max, and Lulu). On the other hand,
the same noun phrase can have different referents. For instance, my two cats, used either by the
same person at different points in time or by different persons at the same point in time, can refer
to distinct feline individuals. Similarly, my current checking account balance can refer to vastly
differing amounts of money (depending on who says it, and/or when they say it).
In general, then, determining the intended referent of an expression requires recourse to a
particular discourse context (who is speaking when, to whom, and so on). The interpretation of
certain expressions, however, is particularly context-dependent. The expressions in question are
pronouns. For instance, it is perfectly natural to introduce a new topic in a conversation with a
friend using (1a) (provided that the speaker and the friend have in common a unique (or at least
uniquely salient) acquaintance by the name of Vanessa). But replacing the proper noun Vanessa
with a pronoun, as in (1b), in the same context is decidedly odd.

(1) a. I ran into Vanessa the other day.

b. I ran into her the other day.

But if Vanessa has already been mentioned in the discourse, then (1b) is perfectly felicitous, as
illustrated in the mini-discourse in (2).

(2) A: Have you seen Vanessa recently?

B: I ran into her the other day.

Pronouns, then, in contrast to ordinary noun phrases, are referentially dependent on

some antecedent in the discourse that clarifies the referent. The term ‘antecedent’ is potentially
misleading. Since it is derived etymologically from Latin ante-cedens ‘one who walks before’,
an antecedent might reasonably be expected to be required to precede a referentially dependent
expression. However, contrary to this expectation, precedence is neither a necessary nor a suf-
ficient condition for antecedenthood. In a sentence like (3), for instance, Zelda does not precede
she, yet can still serve as the pronoun’s antecedent.
Chapter 15: Binding theory 539

(3) If she calls, tell Zelda that the package arrived.

Conversely, Zelda precedes her in both examples in (4), but is unable to serve as the antecedent
of her in (4b) (in other words, (4b) cannot mean ‘Zelda likes herself’).

(4) a. Zelda believes that nobody likes her.

b. Zelda likes her.

A less misleading term for the notion of antecedent might be ‘referential anchor’, but we will
continue to use the standard term ‘antecedent’.

15.1.2 Coreference
A discourse will often contain more than one possible antecedent for a pronoun. For instance, in
(5), he can refer to either Preston or Victor.

(5) Preston told Victor that he needed some time off.

In any particular discourse context, of course, one interpretation may well be favored over the
other, given what is known about Preston, Victor, their respective work loads, and so on. In case
the antecedent for he must be explicitly specified in an unambiguous way, this can be achieved
as in (6).

(6) a. Preston told Victor that he, Preston, needed some time off.
b. Preston told Victor that he, Victor, needed some time off.

When (5) is given the interpretation in (6a), he and Preston are said to corefer. On the alternative
interpretation in (6b), it is he and Victor that corefer.

15.1.3 Coindexing
It is convenient to introduce a general notational device to represent coreference relations. Let us
begin by associating any noun phrase with a referential index. In the literature, it is standard
to use the letters of the alphabet as indices, beginning with i (for ‘index’: indices [ˈɪndəsiːz] is the
plural for index). But as we already use i, j, k, … as indices with another function (associating
traces/copies with their associated moved elements), we adopt the convention in this chapter
of using the natural numbers as referential indices (ex., 1, 2, 3, etc). Specifically, in order to
indicate an interpretation in which two expressions refer to the same discourse entity (that is, in
which they corefer), we assign the same index to both expressions. The two expressions are then
said to be coindexed. On the other hand, in order to indicate an interpretation in which two
expressions refer to distinct discourse entities (that is, in which they do not corefer), we assign
distinct indices to each of the two expressions. Such expressions are said to be contraindexed. In
neither case are the specific indices important: the choice of indices is arbitrary. All that matters
for this annotation is that DPs bearing the same index refer to the same real-world entity, and
DPs bearing different indices refer to different real-world entities. That is, both indexings in (7)
represent the interpretation in (6a), and both indexings in (8) represent the interpretation in (6b).
Chapter 15: Binding theory 540

The (a) examples use the numerals the way we will in this chapter as indices, and the (b) examples
use Greek letters as indices (chosen based on which ones looked most fancy).

(7) a. Preston1 told Victor2 that he1 needed some time off.
b. PrestonΩ told VictorΨ that heΩ needed some time off.
(8) a. Preston5 told Victor6 that he6 needed some time off.
b. PrestonΣ told VictorΔ that heΔ needed some time off.

The point is that the indices themselves aren’t meaningful: we could choose any symbol that we
want here. The point is that the same index on two elements indicates that those elements corefer,
and different indices on two elements indicates that those elements do not share a referent.
(9) gives a further possible indexing for the sentence in (5). Of course, in any particular
discourse, this indexing is felicitous only if a discourse entity with the index 3 (say, Preston’s
brother Landon) has already been mentioned.

(9) Preston1 told Victor2 that he3 needed some time off.

The puzzle: restrictions on coreference 15.2

Take good care to distinguish between reference and indexing. Reference relations are actual
linguistic relations that we have intuitions about. For instance, we have the intuition that Preston
and him can corefer in (10a), but not in (10b).

(10) a. Preston thinks that everyone admires him.

b. Preston admires him.

The assignment of indices, on the other hand, is a notational device that is intended to
represent arbitrary reference relations; the indices themselves have no independent linguistic
or psychological status. As a result, it is perfectly possible to assign referential indices to noun
phrases so as to represent interpretations of a sentence that could be imagined to be possible, but
which are in fact ungrammatical. Two such ungrammatical indexings are illustrated in (11).

(11) a. * Preston1 admires him1 .

b. * He1 admires Preston1 .

This makes a notational point: it’s possible to assign indices in a way that generates an ungram-
matical sentence, since the annotation just marks a pattern of (attempted) coreference. But it also
makes an empirical point: a referential DP and a pronoun cannot corefer when occurring in the
configurations in (11).
Chapter 15: Binding theory 541

Notice that the proposition that both (11a) and (11b) are trying to express is not inherently
semantically anomalous. It can be expressed perfectly grammatically as in (12).

(12) Preston1 admires himself1 .

Notice furthermore that what makes the sequences in (11) ungrammatical is the index assignment.
The same sequences of words as in (11) are grammatical sentences when associated with the
indices in (13).

(13) a. ✔ Preston1 admires him2 .

b. ✔ He1 admires Preston2 .

In other words, the grammaticality of a sequence is always determined with respect to a particular
interpretation.
It is often convenient to combine the information in (11) and (13) as in (14). The examples
in (14) list multiple possible coreference possibilities on him and himself.

(14) a. ✔ Preston1 admires him2, *1 .

b. ✔ He2, *1 admires Preston1 .
c. ✔ Preston1 admires himself1, *2 .

Why can’t sentences like (11a) or (11b) express the proposition that is expressed grammat-
ically in (14c)? Such questions are precisely the puzzle that binding theory seeks to answer.
Before we can discuss an analysis of this puzzle, though, we need to review a core concept.

Reintroducing c-command 15.3

A central component of Binding Theory is the structural relation called c-command. This was
first introduced in § 11 of Chapter 3, but has not been a central part of our discussion of our model
up until this point, and as such we re-introduce it here.
We will use the puzzle from Exercise 3.3 to do so: consider the baseline sentences in (15),
the first an active transitive sentence and the second a passive version of that sentence.

(15) a. Jay read seven books last night.

b. Seven books were read last night.

The puzzle here centers on the English expression any. As (16) shows, this is ungrammatical
when modifying the object of our baseline sentence.

(16) * Jay read any books last night.

Chapter 15: Binding theory 542

It is possible to have any in that position, however, if the sentence is negated as in (17). So
something about negation appears to license English any. This is why any is in a class of elements
called negative polarity items, items that are licensed by negative polarity.

(17) Jay didn’t read any books last night

But not just any instance of negation in a sentence licenses any. So the passive sentence in
(18) is ungrammatical, despite being negated (we saw a grammatical parallel of this without any
in (15b) above).

(18) * Any books weren’t read last night.

A first pass at this discussion might lead us to conclude that negation must linearly precede
any in order for any to be licensed. But examples like (19) show that this first attempt at a
generalization is insufficient; (19b) contains a negation that linearly precedes any, but is still
ungrammatical.

(19) a. The person that didn’t like reading read seven books last night.
b. * The person that didn’t like reading read any books last night.

So linear precedence is insufficient. What relationship is it that must hold between negation
and any that is present in (17), but is absent in (19b) and in (18)? The answer is c-command:

(20) A c-commands B if and only if

a. neither A nor B dominates the other, and
b. the first branching node that dominates A also dominates B.

We can use the simplified tree structure in (21) (sketching the structure of (19a)) to walk
through this definition of c-command. So when looking for c-command relationships between
two nodes, crucially neither node can dominate the other. So any in (21) is not c-commanded by
the DP that contains it, because the DP node (DP1 ) dominates any. Likewise, both V′ nodes, VP,
I′ , and IP all dominate any, and therefore cannot c-command any.

(21) IP

DPk I′

The person that I◦ VP

didn’t like reading [pst]
tk V′2

V′1 DP2

V◦ DP1 last night

read
any books
Chapter 15: Binding theory 543

In contrast, consider the second condition in (20): for A to c-command B, the first branching
node dominating node A also dominates B. We can evaluate this for the V◦ node in (21). The first
branching node dominating A is V′1 , and V′1 dominates any (i.e. any is contained within V′1 ). And,
crucially, V◦ itself does not dominate any. Therefore we can say that in (21), V◦ c-commands any.
In contrast, V◦ does not c-command DP2 , but DP2 c-commands V◦.
There are various ways to conceptualize c-command that might be helpful. One is to strictly
visualize it—trace your finger from the node in question up to its parent, and then down the
other branch—that first node (where your finger started) c-commands anything down the second
branch. The familial metaphor may also be helpful. Symmetric c-command is the sibling rela-
tionship: two XPs c-command each other. Asymmetric c-command is the uncle/aunt relationship
(or great-uncle/aunt, or great-great-uncle/aunt). So in our example, DP1 is a parent of any (or
grandparent, depending on the internal structure of DP1 ). V◦ is the sibling of DP1 , and therefore
V◦ is the aunt/uncle of any. In general syntacticians don’t extend the familial metaphor of trees
to this extent, but we mention it in case it helps to conceptualize what c-command is.
So, in the tree in (21), V◦ c-commands any and DP2 c-commands any (but, of course, none
of the sub-constituents of DP2 do). Likewise, I◦ c-commands any and DPk c-commands any,
but none of the sub-constituents of DPk c-command any. This gives us a path to explaining the
distribution of any: negation must c-command any.2 In (21) the negation is a sub-constituent
of DPk and therefore does not c-command any. Compare that to (22), which depicts the structure
of (17) above. This sentence is grammatical with any, and in this sentence Neg◦ does in fact c-
command any: the first branching node that dominates Neg◦ is Neg′ , and Neg′ also dominates
any.

(22) IP

DPk I′

Jay I◦ NegP
[pst]
did Neg′

Neg◦ VP
n’t
tk V′2

V′1 DP2

V◦ DP1 last night

read
any books
This analysis proves accurate: the examples below discuss the indomitable Pomona-Pitzer
Sagehens football team. The negative adverb never can license any in object position, but if never
is embedded inside a larger constituent, it no longer c-commands any, and the sentence becomes
ungrammatical.
Chapter 15: Binding theory 544

(23) a. The Sagehens never lost any games before today.

b. * The Sagehens always lost any games before today.
(24) a. * The never-beaten Sagehens lost any games before today.
b. * The always-beaten Sagehens lost any games before today.
This is an extended discussion of the negative polarity item any, but the purpose is to
familiarize you with the notion of c-command. C-command plays a central role in binding theory,
which we turn to now.

Chomsky’s (1981) Binding Theory 15.4

The standard binding theory of Chomsky (1981) was developed mainly based on the pattern of
facts from English, but it has proven to hold up quite well cross-linguistically. Chomsky’s binding
theory contains three conditions (also known as principles), which govern the distribution of
reflexive and reciprocal pronouns (Principle A), ordinary pronouns (Principle B), and referential
noun phrases (Principle C), respectively. We present each of these principles in turn.

15.4.1 Principle A
Consider the English binding facts in (25). These examples use a self-reflexive (herself ). Self-
reflexives are instances of what are often called anaphors, a class that also includes reciprocals
like each other. In (25) we see that a self-reflexive in object position readily is coreferential with
its subject, but not with a subconstituent of that subject.
(25) a. [ Zelda ]1 helped [ herself ]1 .
b. [ Zelda’s sister ]1 helped [ herself ]1 .
c. * [ Zelda ]1 ’s sister helped [ herself ]1 .

Word of Caution
The term anaphor in Chomsky’s usage refers to reflexive and reciprocal pronouns. This
usage is potentially confusing because in general linguistic usage, anaphora refers to ref-
erential dependence regardless of morphological form. In other words, ordinary pronouns
and even full noun phrases can count as anaphors in this wide sense. Here, we will use the
restricted sense of the term, in keeping with Chomsky’s usage. But you will often see an
expression referred to as anaphoric, which often means that it picks up its reference from
context in some way, not that it is specifically a reflexive or a reciprocal.

Chomsky (1981) derives the grammaticality pattern in (25) on the basis of c-command,
defined above in (20) and explained in § 15.3. The structures for the sentences in (25) are shown
Chapter 15: Binding theory 545

in (26). The branching node dominating the intended antecedent is highlighted by a box. Notice
now that the red boxed nodes dominates that anaphor in (26a) and (26b), but not in (27). In other
words, the anaphor is c-commanded by the intended antecedent in (26a) and (26b), but not in
(27).

(26) a. IP

DPi,1 I′

Zelda I◦ vP
[pst]
ti v′

v◦ VP

V′

V◦ DP1
helped
herself
b. IP

DPi,1 I′

DP D′ I◦ vP
[pst]
Zelda D◦ NP ti v′
’s
sister v◦ VP

V′

V◦ DP1
helped
herself
Chapter 15: Binding theory 546

(27) IP

DPi I′

DP1 D′ I◦ vP
[pst]
Zelda D◦ NP ti v′
’s
sister v◦ VP

V′

V◦ DP1
helped
herself

These configurational relations suggest the condition on reflexives (and in fact, anaphors in gen-
eral) in (28).

(28) Principle A (to be revised):

An anaphor must be c-commanded by a coindexed antecedent.

(28) is generally expressed more succinctly as in (29), where the notion of binding is defined as
in (30).

(29) An anaphor must be bound. (to be revised)

(30) A binds B if and only if

a. A c-commands B, and
b. A and B are coindexed.

As it turns out, (29) is a necessary but not sufficient condition on anaphors in English, since
it fails to account for complex sentences like (31).

(31) Landon1 thinks that Malia2 will help { herself2 / *himself1 }.

The grammaticality of the variant with herself is unproblematic (herself is bound by Malia). But
given (29), the ungrammaticality of the variant with himself is surprising, because himself is
bound by Landon.
We therefore need to specify a binding domain, a locality domain within which an
anaphor must be bound. A fully complete definition of binding domains is fairly complex; we
will offer an initial version here that we will work our way up to it in several steps, motivating
each revision of the definition in turn.3
Chapter 15: Binding theory 547

(32) Principle A (final version):

An anaphor must be bound within its binding domain.
(33) Binding domain (to be revised):
The binding domain for an expression is the lowest IP that contains that expression.

The formulation in (33) is a good initial step—in our example from (31), this restricts the
possible (grammatical) antecedent of the embedded object to the subject of the embedded clause,
which is within the lowest IP containing the self-phrase. Attempting to have the main clause
subject be the antecedent of the embedded self-reflexive violates (32) on the assumption of the
binding domain in (33), because the main clause subject is not within the lowest IP that contains
the anaphor.
To continue to address our understanding of the binding domain, however, consider (34a),
which we can assume to have the structure in (34b).

(34) a. They1 believe themselves1 to be indispensable.

b. IP

DPi,1 I′

they I◦ vP
[pRs]
ti v′

v◦ VP

V′

V◦ IP
believe
DPk,1 I′

themselves I◦ vP
to
t k be indispensable

Let’s consider in detail why (34) poses a difficulty for the definition in (33). As is evident
from (34b), the lowest IP that contains the anaphor is the complement IP (indicated by the box).
But this complement IP contains no antecedent for the anaphor, so (34a) is incorrectly predicted
to be ungrammatical. But it IS grammatical. So we need a definition of binding domains that can
account for both (31) and (34a).

(35) Binding domain (second attempt, to be revised again):

The binding domain for an expression is the lowest finite IP that contains that expression.
Chapter 15: Binding theory 548

The redefinition in (35) excludes non-finite IPs, as in (34a), but includes tensed/agreeing
IPs as in (31). This therefore ensures that the embedded IP in (34a) does not constitute a binding
domain, and only the main clause IP does, explaining why (34a) is grammatical. In contrast, the
embedded IP in (31) is itself finite, and therefore a binding domain, explaining why Principle A
must be satisfied by an antecedent inside the embedded clause.
As it turns out, we’re still not done yet. (35) correctly explains (31) and (34a), but is unable
to account for contrasts as in (36).

(36) a. ✔ { She, they, I } bought Preston1 ’s book about himself1 .

b. * Preston1 bought { her, their, my } book about himself1 .

In both sentences, the lowest finite IP that contains himself (the only IP in the sentence) also con-
tains Preston, in accordance with the definition of binding domain in (35). The ungrammaticality
of (36b) is therefore unexpected.
A first step in accounting for such contrasts lies in making reference to DPs in addition to
IPs in the definition of governing category, as in (37).

(37) Binding domain (to be revised):

The binding domain for an expression is the lowest finite IP or DP that contains that
expression.

As a final step (for our current purposes), we can ask what natural class of elements in-
cludes finite IPs and DPs. The answer is the phase, which includes CPs (which contain finite
IPs) and DPs. Previously we saw phases constraining wh-movement: movement out of a phase is
ungrammatical unless it passes through the edge of the phase (see § 14.2.2 of Chapter 14). Here
we can see that they also map onto the relevant domain for calculating binding.

(38) Binding domain (to be revised):

The governing category for an expression is the phase.

An intrepid reader may still yet turn up some interesting details that challenge this generalization,
and we don’t mean to imply that there aren’t apparent exceptions to this that would need to be
sorted out. But this is a good enough definition that captures the majority of cases.4

15.4.2 Principle B
We turn now to the distribution of pronouns.

Word of Caution
As noted earlier, reflexive and reciprocal pronouns are combined in Chomsky’s usage un-
der the rubric of anaphors. This leaves the unqualified term ‘pronoun’ to refer to ordinary
personal pronouns (I, you, he, and so on). Unless otherwise noted, we follow this usage
below.

Replacing the anaphors in (25) by pronouns yields the sentences in (39).

Chapter 15: Binding theory 549

(39) a. * [ Zelda ]1 helped [ her ]1 .

b. * [ Zelda’s sister ]1 helped [ her ]1 .
c. ✔ [ Zelda ]1 ’s sister helped [ her ]1 .

The resulting grammaticality pattern, which is the converse of that in (25), suggests the condition
in (40).

(40) Principle B (to be revised):

A pronoun must be free, that is, not bound by an antecedent.

As in the case of our first formulation of Principle A, the formulation of Principle B in (40)
is not yet quite adequate. This time, however, the condition errs on the side of caution, incorrectly
ruling out grammatical sentences like (41).

(41) John1 thinks Mary will help him1 .

Since John c-commands him (along with everything else in the sentence), (40) incorrectly leads
us to expect (41) to be ungrammatical.
The fact that the antecedent and the pronoun belong to different clauses in (41) suggests
reformulating (40) to incorporate the concept of a binding domain, as in (42).

(42) Principle B (final):

A pronoun must be free in its binding domain.

This definition is the inverse of Principle A, which captures the empirical observation that
anaphors and pronouns are in complementary distribution. As above, we assume the binding
domain to be the phase (finite CPs and DPs, though we haven’t discussed DPs as phases much in
this text).

15.4.3 Principle C
Consider the sentences in (43). Keep in mind that these are grammatical sentences if the pronouns
refer to someone else, but we are specifically evaluating the reading where the pronoun and the
embedded nominal Arianna are coreferent.

(43) a. She2,*1 treats Arianna1 well.

b. She2,*1 claims that they treat Arianna1 well.
c. She2,*1 claims that we know that they treat Arianna1 well.

It is tempting to blame the ungrammaticality of these sentences on something about the pronoun,
since one reading of the pronoun is acceptable, but another is not. But if we view this through
the perspective of Principle B, in each of these sentences the pronoun she is not bound (it is co-
indexed with Arianna, but not c-commanded by Arianna). So the problem with these sentences
cannot be a Principle B violation.
Chapter 15: Binding theory 550

In order to rule out sentences like (43a), Binding Theory contains a third principle
that governs the distribution of full lexical noun phrases (referred to in Chomsky’s usage as
R(eferential)-expressions).

(44) Principle C: (final)

R-expressions must be free.

Principle C is reminiscent of Principle B, but differs from it in that the anti-binding requirement
is absolute (= independent of a binding domain), as required by the ungrammaticality of (43b)
and (43c).
The examples in (43) would all be called instances of cataphora, instances of referential de-
pendence where the antecedent follows the referentially dependent element. It is worth pointing
out explicitly that not all instances of cataphora are ungrammatical. There are many examples
where the referentially dependent element precedes the antecedent that are grammatical. For
example, in (45) the pronoun he linearly precedes the coindexed nominal Langston; crucially, he
does not c-command Langston, since it is embedded in an adjunct clause. Sentences like these are
grammatical, as expected under our Binding Principles; since neither element is bound, neither
Principle B nor Principle C is violated.

(45) [ If he1 calls, ] tell Langston1 I’ll be back in an hour.

Word of Caution
The term ‘anaphora’ is generally used to refer to referential dependence, subsuming
both cataphora and what might be called strict anaphora, where the antecedent precedes
the referentially dependent element. According to the metaphor underlying the terms,
discourse flows along like a stream, with temporally earlier elements located upstream
from later ones. The antecedent is then upstream of the referentially dependent element
in strict anaphora (< Greek ἀνα ana ‘up(stream)’), but downstream in cataphora (< Greek
κατά kata ‘down(stream)’).

A final point needs to be made about Principle C. We pointed out earlier that Principle C is
an absolute requirement in the sense that it makes no reference to binding domains. It is absolute
in a further sense as well: it makes no reference to whether the binder is a referentially dependent
element. Thus, Principle C rules out (46) on a par with (43a).

(46) *? Arianna1 treats Arianna1 well.

It has been argued, however, that given the right discourse conditions, sentences like (47),
which are structurally parallel to (46), are in fact acceptable. Two naturally-occurring examples
of the same type are given in (48).

(47) Nobody likes Oscar. Even Oscar1 doesn’t like Oscar1 .

(48) a. Phil1 said that if he2 came by, Phil1 would show him2 around.
(in an email from manager@ling.upenn.edu to beatrice@ling.upenn.edu)
Chapter 15: Binding theory 551

b. Luke1 thinks that everyone has as much integrity as Luke1 has.

(overheard at the White Dog Cafe, Philadelphia, PA, 17 Feb 2001)

But equivalent sentences in which the full noun phrase is bound by a referentially depen-
dent element are ungrammatical.

(49) * Nobody likes Oscar. Even he1 doesn’t like Oscar1 .

(50) a. * He1 said that if { he2 / Sean2 } came by, Phil1 would show him2 around.
b. * He1 thinks that everyone has as much integrity as Luke1 has.

Although judgments regarding contrasts of the type illustrated by (47)–(50) can be delicate,
it seems reasonable to weaken Principle C to include reference to the status of the binder, as is
done in (51).

(51) Hypothetical weakened version of Principle C:

Full noun phrases must not be bound by a referentially dependent element.

That said, the sentences in (47) tend to have some kind of special emphatic quality that
might suggest that the original version of Principle C is in effect. For our purposes, the principles
as we stated them above are sufficient (and most research relies on these statements as described
here). But there is an entire universe of research literature on Binding Theory and the relevant
patterns of coreference. Some well-studied languages like English, German, Italian, and Spanish
have extensive work on them. Most languages, even languages with robust reference grammars
written about them, don’t have nearly the same level of detailed syntactic research. There re-
mains much work to be done, and we don’t mean to imply that Binding Theory and the binding
principles noted here are the final word on the issue. But the principles as stated above capture
a vast amount of the empirical properties of binding effects in the world’s languages.

Binding Theory as a diagnostic 15.5

The properties of binding in the grammar of human languages is obviously a puzzle in its own
right, that deserves its own exploration and explanation. But because the patterns captured by
Principles A, B, and C are so reliable and consistent, they actually allow us to use binding theoretic
principles as diagnostics in the service of other investigations. Specifically, as Binding Theory
makes clear, c-command is a central component of binding properties, and c-command is a very
specific structural configuration. So we can use the availability (or not) of binding configurations
to diagnose c-command relationships between different elements in the syntax.
Chapter 15: Binding theory 552

15.5.1 Ditransitives
Binding theory (and related phenomena) played a major role in the theoretical developments
that led to the decomposition of the verb phrase into a more complex structure, as we explored
in Chapter 13. In the absence of the complex VP approach, ditransitives are troublesome for the
X′ schema: if heads have a single complement that is typically their object, how is it possible to
have two objects, as in ditransitive verbs?

(52) Maisha gave Langston a gift.

We will consider three main alternatives that were under consideration when this was first
being worked on: one is a departure from binary branching, allowing for two complements of
the verb (53a). The second is an adjunction structure (53b), and the third in (53c) is something
closer to the structure we adopted in Chapter 13. There is more complexity to the VP domain
than these structures suggest (as we saw in Chapter 13), but we’ll use the structure in (53c) as a
proxy for any structure where OBJ1 c-commands OBJ2.

(53) a. VP

V′

V◦ OBJ1 OBJ2

b. VP

V′

V′ OBJ2

V◦ OBJ1

c. VP

OBJ1 V′

V◦ OBJ2

Crucially, each of these have different c-command relationships between the DP objects in
a ditransitive. In (53a) the DPs are in a mutual c-command relationship (they each c-command
the other); in (53b) OBJ2 asymmetrically c-commands OBJ1, and in (53c) and other structures like
it (such as an applicative structure), OBJ1 c-commands OBJ2. This means that operations or con-
structions that are sensitive to c-command make different predictions for each of the structures
Chapter 15: Binding theory 553

above. Binding is one of these, and it played an important role in the development of complex
VPs as a theoretical model for ditransitive verbs (Barss and Lasnik 1986; Larson 1988).
As we saw above, reflexives and reciprocals are subject to Principle A, meaning they must
be c-commanded by their antecedent. So in a OBJ1-OBJ2 ditransitive predicate, what are the
c-command relationships between the two predicates? (54) shows that OBJ1 can have the an-
tecedent for a self-reflexive in OBJ2, but not the other way around.

(54) a. I showed Khydence herself (in the mirror).

b. * I showed herself Khydence (in the mirror).

This suggests an asymmetrical c-command relationship between the DP objects (ruling out
the ternary structure in (53a)). And (54) behaves as if OBJ1 c-commands OBJ2, not the other way
round; this is consistent with the structure in (53c) and not in (53b).
Reciprocals like each other are also anaphors, expected to be subject to Principle A. In the
examples below, the other is the anaphor that must be bound within its binding domain.

(55) a. I showed each student the other’s paper.

b. * I showed the other’s friend each student.

This shows us the exact same conclusion as above: OBJ1 behaves like it c-commands OBJ2, but
not the other way around: it appears to be an asymmetric c-command relationship.
Another diagnostic is a cousin of the binding principles we referred to above: quantifier-
variable binding. In an example like (56), there is a ‘bound’ reading where the pronoun their
is interpreted in light of the quantifier: for each child, they love their own mother. We show
this reading via co-indexing. The non-bound reading is always available (every child loves some
person’s mother).

(56) [Every child ]k loves theirk mother.

Crucially, for a bound reading to be possible, the quantifier must c-command the variable.
This allows is to create a similar scenario in ditransitive constructions to test the c-command
relationships between objects. The examples below make one object a quantifier, and the other
contains a variable.

(57) a. I gave [every worker]k theirk paycheck.

b. * I gave itsk owner [every paycheck]k .
c. [Every paycheck]k was given to itsk owner.
(based on Larson 1988, (3b))

The example in (57c) is included to show that the meaning in (57b) is perfectly natural; it
is the particular configuration of quantifier and variable in (57b) that make it uninterpretable.
This pattern confirms what we saw above: if variables must be c-commanded by the quantifier
in order to get the relevant reading, these data suggest that OBJ1 asymmetrically c-commands
OBJ2.
Chapter 15: Binding theory 554

In § 15.3 above we used negative polarity items (NPIs) like any to understand c-command,
because NPIs need to be c-commanded by negation. We can likewise use that relationship to
diagnose the structure of ditransitives.

(58) a. I showed no one anything.

b. * I showed anyone nothing.
(Larson 1988, 337)

This is again consistent with the conclusion from each example above: OBJ1 asymmet-
rically c-commands OBJ2. This is consistent with the structure in (53c), and inconsistent with
either of the other structures.
There are two main take-away lessons here. First is that these patterns reconfirm the con-
clusions of Chapter 13 regarding the internal structure of the verb phrase; it is always comforting
to find converging evidence from different empirical domains for an analytical conclusion. Our
structures in the field have evolved since we used structures like (53c); the predominant approach
currently uses structures that look like (59). The crucial fact in the current discussion is that this
current model, like (53c), is a structure where OBJ1 asymmetrically c-commands OBJ2.

(59)
vP

agent v′

v◦ ApplP
[caus]
OBJ1 Appl′

Appl◦ VP

V′

V◦ OBJ2
√
Root

Second (and more relevant to the current chapter): in addition to patterns of binding and
coreference being their own puzzle, one of the major roles of Binding Theory and Binding Prin-
ciples is in diagnosing structure in the course of investigating other properties of language. A
syntactic diagnostic is any property of language that behaves predictably enough that we can use
it to understand other properties of language. Principles A, B, and C are just that: very consistent
properties of language.
Chapter 15: Binding theory 555

15.5.2 Distinguishing movement types

In this textbook we have also distinguished two different kinds of movement: A-movement is
movement to an argument position (that we described as a Case-licensing position), whereas
A′ -movement is movement to a non-argument position: it is independent of Case and is in-
stead typically linked with discourse properties, often typified by movement to the CP-domain.
And we’ve previously seen some properties distinguishing these kinds of movements beyond
just the target of movement. For example, A′ -movement, like the wh-movement in (60b), can
be quite long-distance, skipping over intermediate (non-wh) arguments. In contrast, a parallel
situation attempting to A-move an embedded object to main-clause subject position is ungram-
matical.

(60) a. I think that the children want to visit Grandpa.

b. Whok do you think that the children want to visit t k ?

(61) a. The childrenk seem t k to want to visit Grandpa.

b. * Grandpak seems the children to want to visit t k .

There are additional syntactic properties that are part of these separate profiles of move-
ment (A versus A′ ). As it turns out, a major way that A-movement and A′ -movement are distin-
guished is on the basis of binding configurations.

(62) A- versus A′ -movement

a. A-moved phrases bind from their landing position.
b. A′ -moved phrases bind from their base position.

We can see this by looking at particular configurations of A-movement and A′ -movement.

Recall from Chapter 11 that seem-type verbs are raising verbs, where the embedded subject moves
from the embedded clause to the matrix clause.

(63) a. Prestonk seems to himselfk [IP Preston to be winning. ]

b. * Prestonk seems to himk [IP Preston to be winning. ]

Notably, these judgments are inverted when the subject is left in the lower clause:

(64) a. * It seems to himselfk that Prestonk is winning.

b. It seems to himk that Prestonk is winning.

This is a quintessential property of A-movement: it creates new positions for binding, so when
the subject moves to Spec,IP in the matrix clause, binding for that DP is calculated from that
position.
A′ -movement behaves distinctly different in this respect. In (65a) the pronoun in subject
position cannot co-refer with Arianna. This is in accordance with Principle C: Arianna is an
R-expression, and can never be bound. Co-indexing Arianna with the pronoun (which also c-
commands Arianna) results in a Principle C violation. Key for our purposes here is that A′ -moving
the phrase containing Arianna to Spec,CP in (65b) does not significantly change these judgments:
it is still quite difficult to get a reading of the pronoun co-referring with Arianna.
Chapter 15: Binding theory 556

(65) a. Arianna1 sent over the pictures of herself1 .

b. [Which pictures of herself1 ]k did Arianna1 send over [which pictures of herself1 ]k ?

This is notable because in its overt position in (65b), herself is not c-commanded by its antecedent
(Arianna). Based on Principle A, we would expect (65b) to be ungrammatical: but it is not. Instead,
herself is grammatical in just the same way that it is in (65a). The finding of syntacticians has
been that this is a consistent property of A′ -movement. A′ -moved XPs participate in binding as
if they hadn’t moved: they bind from their lower position and not their higher position. So in
our example in (65b), the DP which pictures of herself is calculated for binding purposes as if it is
in its base position, not its moved position. This is often referred to as reconstruction, on the
metaphor that a moved phrase (for binding purposes, perhaps at LF) reconstructs back into its
trace position. The copy theory of movement allows us to say that the original copy of the moved
phrase is the one that participates in binding, but we still refer to this as reconstruction.
This is just a very simple introduction to a much more complex topic. The point for our
current purposes is to again illustrate the role of binding properties in natural language syntax.
For syntacticians as researchers, the properties of binding are so predictable and consistent cross-
linguistically that binding itself becomes a toolkit for investigating other phenomena, whether
attempting to diagnose the structural relationship between phrase, or understanding whether a
moved phrase A-moved or A′ -moved.

New Empirical Observations

▶ reference, coreference, and coindexing

▶ There are restrictions on coreference.

Components of the Theoretical Model

▶ c-command (review)
▶ binding (coreference + c-command)
▶ bound and free noun phrases
▶ Binding Theory
▶ binding domains
▷ Principle A: Anaphors must be bound within their binding domains
▷ Principle B: Pronouns must be free within their binding domains
▷ Principle C: Full noun phrases must be free
 Chapter 15: Binding theory 557

Notes 15.6
1. Thanks to Eva Banik for the Hungarian examples in this section. For detailed discussions of relevant facts, see also
Kiefer and Kiss (1994) and Kiss (2002).

2. There’s a long history of work on negative polarity items (NPIs) that shows that negation is not the only licensing
environment for NPIs: a closer (but still not comprehensive) generalization is to say that downward entailing (DE)
environments license NPIs, of which negation is one such DE environment. But negation does need to be in a c-
command relationship with an NPI to license it, so that portion of our discussion is accurate and sufficient for our
purposes. But we wanted to note here that the semantics literature contains a lengthy and interesting literature on
licensing of NPIs. See Chierchia (2013) for an overview.

3. As is the case with any introductory text, an interested reader should consult the relevant literature for more details
(Safir 2004; Reuland 2011; Charnavel and Sportiche 2016).

4. A significant exception is so-called ‘logophoric’ uses of anaphors (also called ‘exempt’ as they appear to be exempt
from Principle A), exceptional instances where anaphors appear to be bound long-distance.

(66) Johni said to Mary that nobody would doubt that physicists like himselfi were a godsend. (Kuno 1987, 125)

It does appear that exempt anaphora have different syntactic properties, though it can be tricky to disentangle them
from anaphora that are subject to Principle A (for recent overviews of the issues, see Charnavel and Sportiche 2016;
Charnavel 2019, 2020)).

Exercises and problems 15.7

Exercise 15.1: Basic practice with binding conditions A
For each sentence in (1), explain how each argument DP satisfies Binding Theory (be precise
about which binding principles are being discussed and why)

(1) a. [The children]k are chasing [each other]k all through the neighborhood.
b. [The boss]k said that theyk are leaving early today.
c. [The boss]k said that theyi are leaving early today.
d. Shek adores [the coach]k .
e. Mikek said that Preston needs to visit himk .
f. [The guest speaker]k introduced herselfk because her host was out sick.
g. [Preston]k ’s mom loves himk .
Chapter 15: Binding theory 558

Exercise 15.2: Basic practice with binding conditions B

Each sentence in (1) is ungrammatical for a Binding Theoretic reason. Explain why each sentence
is ungrammatical, being specific about all relevant components of Binding Theory.

(1) a. * [The coach]k supports herk .

b. * Shek really likes Maishak .
c. * Mikek said that Preston needs to correct himselfk .
d. * Shek said that Skylar really likes Maishak .
e. * [Preston]k ’s mom loves himselfk .
f. * Langstonk said that himselfk is hungry.

Problem 15.1: Norwegian anaphors A

Data are drawn from Hellan (1988).
A. Describe the ways that the Norwegian forms seg and seg selv are similar to / different from
English X-self.
B. To what extent does Chomsky’s Binding Theory cover these Norwegian forms?
Like English, Norwegian also distinguishes between pronouns with forms containing selv
‘self’ and ones without. As (1) and (2) show, selv is in complementary distribution with zero (that
is, where a form with selv can occur, a form without selv cannot, and vice versa).

(1) a. ✔ Jon1 beundrer seg selv1 .

admires seg self
b. * Jon1 beundrer seg1 .
‘Jon1 admires himself1 .’
(2) a. * Jon1 bad oss beundre seg selv1 .
asked us admire seg self
b. ✔ Jon1 bad oss beundre seg1 .
‘Jon1 asked us to admire him1 .’

(3) a. ✔ Jon1 snakket om seg selv1 .

talked about seg self
b. * Jon1 snakket om seg1 .
‘Jon1 talked about himself1 .’
(4) a. * Jon1 bad oss snakke om seg selv1 .
asked us talk about seg self
b. ✔ Jon1 bad oss snakke om seg1 .
‘Jon1 asked us to talk about him1 .’

(5) Jon1 så seg selv1 sitte i stolen.

saw seg self sit in chair.def
‘Jon1 saw himself1 sit in the chair.’
Binding theory 559

(6) a. ✔ [IP Jon1 bad oss forsøke å få deg til å snakke pent om seg1 ].
asked us try to get you towards to talk nicely about seg
‘Jon1 asked us to try to get you to talk nicely about him1 .’
b. * Jon1 var ikke klar over at [IP vi hadde snakket om seg1 ].
was not aware over that we had talked about seg
‘Jon1 was not aware that we had talked about him1 .’

Problem 15.2: Norwegian anaphors B

Data and descriptions here are drawn from Hellan (1988).
This problem set builds on Problem 15.1.
In addition to the distinction between elements with and without selv, Norwegian distin-
guishes between the two third-person singular forms seg and ham. Like seg, ham occurs on its
own as well as before selv.

(1) Jon1 snakket om { seg / *ham } selv1 .

talked about seg ham self
‘Jon1 talked about himself1 .’
(2) a. Vi snakket med Jon1 om { ham / *seg } selv1 .
we talked with about ham seg self
‘We talked with Jon1 about himself1 .’
b. Vi fortalte Jon1 om { ham / *seg } selv1 .
we told about ham seg self
‘We told Jon1 about himself1 .’

(3) Vi gjorde Jon1 glad i { seg / *ham } selv1 .

we made fond of seg ham self
‘We made Jon1 fond of himself1 .’
A. Describe the empirical similarities and differences between seg selv (from Problem 15.1)
and ham selv.
B. Chomsky’s Binding Theory as presented here won’t provide a toolkit for explaining these
differences, but you do have a toolkit given the concepts we’ve learned in the textbook so
far. As precisely as you are able, explain where ham selv appears as compared to where seg
selv appears.
Glossary

asterisk (*) indicates a sentence’s syntactic ill-formedness (ungrammaticality)

(1) * The had bastard the nerve confront me to

Enclosing material that is preceded by an asterisk with parentheses indicates that including
the material in parentheses is ungrammatical. Thus, (2) abbreviates the examples in (3).

(2) a. The (*those) cats like treats.

b. My cats like(*s) treats.

(3) a. i. The cats like treats.

ii. * The those cats like treats.
b. i. My cats like treats.
ii. * My cats likes treats.

On the other hand, prefixing an asterisk to material that is enclosed in parentheses indicates
that the parenthesized material is obligatory. Thus, (4) abbreviates the examples in (5).

(4) a. They consumed *(dinner).

b. My cat like*(s) treats.

(5) a. i. * They consumed.

ii. They consumed dinner.
b. i. * My cat like treats.
ii. My cat likes treats.

78, 224
{ } curly brackets Curly brackets enclose alternatives. For instance, (6) abbreviates the two ex-
amples in (7).

(6) They do { not, so } like your brother.

(7) a. They do not like your brother.

Glossary 561

b. They do so like your brother.

Curly brackets may be combined with ( ) parentheses. , 561

( ) parentheses Parentheses enclose optional elements. For instance, (8) abbreviates the two
examples in (9).

(8) They do (not) like your brother.

(9) a. They do like your brother.

b. They do not like your brother.

Parentheses may be combined with { } curly brackets. For instance, (10) abbreviates the
examples in (11).

(10) They do ( not, so ) like your brother.

(11) a. They do like your brother.

b. They do not like your brother.
c. They do so like your brother.

, 561
% percent A percent sign indicates that an example is accepted as grammatical by some speak-
ers, but rejected by others.

(12) % We use a gas stove anymore; anymore we use a gas stove.

(chiefly Midwest, but found throughout the United States except New England;
earliest recorded examples from Northern Ireland)

253
# pound sign indicates a sentence’s semantic or pragmatic ill-formedness.

(13) # Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.

A-movement Movement of a DP to a Case-licensing head (that is to say, an argument position),

which typically occurs in connection with some core grammatical function. In general,
only DP arguments can participate in A-movement. Examples include movement of sub-
jects to Spec,IP and movement of theme arguments to Spec,IP in passives. , 565, 575
absolutive case A case form that canonically marks objects of transitive sentences and subjects
of intransitive sentences in an ergative-absolutive case alignment. 357, 568
abstract Case Refers to the proposed abstract Case-features on nominals that must be valued
or assigned. Traditionally capitalized in the syntax literature in contradistinction with
lowercase morphological case. 337, 575
accusative case A case form that canonically marks objects of transitive sentences in a
nominative-accusative case alignment. 145, 331, 563, 575
Glossary 562

adjunct A constituent that is both sibling to an intermediate projection and child of an inter-
mediate projection. Often associated with modifiers which add descriptive information to
another constituent. For instance, on Tuesdays in We eat tuna on Tuesdays is an adjunct.
187, 579, see also complement & specifier
adposition Any P, regardless of whether it is head-initial or head-final. See Chapter 6 for ex-
amples. 229, see also postposition
agent A thematic role assigned to a (perceivedly) conscious or sentient argument that brings
about a state of affairs by its own will. For example, in the sentence The extraterrestrials
abducted my cows, the agent is the extraterrestrials. 140, 581, see also cause & instrument
Agree operation The operation within current generative syntactic theory that allows the prop-
erties/features of one element to be determined by another element in a sentence (for exam-
ple, verbs agreeing in person and number with their subject). The Agree operation consists
of a Probe (which seeks out a value for particular features) and the Goal, the phrase bearing
those features that values the features on the Probe. 349
agreement The sharing of one or more features between two (or more) parts of a sentence. A
common example is subject-verb agreement, where a verb is inflected differently according
to features of its subject such as person, number, or gender/noun class. 329, 569
algorithm An explicit, step-by-step procedure for solving a problem or accomplishing a task.
Examples: instructions for installing a water filter or for filing your income taxes; a pesto
recipe; a knitting pattern.
applicative A form of a verb (or a verbal derivational morpheme) that increases its number of
arguments (valency) by one. One way of conceiving of this is to say that an applicative
adds an argument by promoting one of its adjuncts to an argument. Often the promoted
adjunct is a recipient, benefactive, instrument, or location. For examples see the discussion
in Chapter 4, § 4.1.3. 137
argument From the point of view of formal logic, an argument is an input to a predicate (in the
formal logic sense). From the point of view of syntax, specifically X′ theory, an argument is
a linguistic expression occupying the specifier or complement position of a head. Because a
predicate can have more semantic arguments than the X′ schema provides, semantic argu-
ments are not necessarily expressed as syntactic arguments. For discussion, see Chapter 4,
§ 4.1 and Chapter 5, § 3. Conversely, not all syntactic arguments are semantic arguments;
see Chapter 4, §§ 4.5.1, 4.1 for examples. 53, 132, 177, 561, 562, 564, 567, 568, 582, see also
expletive
argument array A list of semantic arguments associated with a predicate. As we use the term
in this book, the list is unordered. The semantic arguments in the array are mapped onto
(that is, associated with) positions in syntactic structure. As discussed in more detail in
Chapter 9, it is possible for the same argument array to be associated with more than one
structure. Conversely, the same structure can be associated with more than one argument
array. 281
auxiliary do See Chapter 3, § 2.5.2
A′-movement Movement of a DP to a non-Case licensing head, which typically occurs for some
Glossary 563

discourse purpose. Put another way, A′-movement is movement to a non-argument posi-

tion. It is pronounced “A-bar movement,” and is not related to the bar-levels of the X′ -
schema (an unfortunate overlap in terminology). Examples include wh-, topic, and focus
movement. , 575
base-generated Base-generation refers to the idea that some phrases have not moved to their
surface position, and are instead pronounced in precisely the places they first entered the
tree. So if a phrase is base-generated in CP, that means its original position in the tree is in
CP (and therefore that it didn’t move to CP from some other position). 312
benefactive A thematic role assigned to an argument that receives something good or otherwise
benefits from an event. For example, in the sentence Janelle’s big brother packed her lunch,
Janelle is the benefactive argument. 467, 562, see also recipient
binding theory A component of syntactic theory concerned with how syntax constrains the
interpretation of noun phrases referring to entities previously referred to in the conversa-
tion (so-called anaphoric noun phrases). See Chapter 15 for a more thorough discussion.
541
bound morpheme A morpheme that cannot stand alone, but must form part of a larger word,
like plural -s, un-, or -ness. In contrast, free morphemes, like cat or happy, can stand alone.
A trailing hyphen indicates that a bound morpheme is a prefix; a leading hyphen indicates
a suffix. , 569
Burzio’s generalization A correlation according to which verbs that are not associated with
a thematic role for an external argument (passives, unaccusatives) are unable to assign
accusative case. For more discussion, see Chapter 13. 478
c-command A syntactic constituent is said to c-command its siblings and all nodes dominated
by its siblings. In the example below the node labeled C c-commands the nodes B, D, E, F,
and G. Node C does not c-command A.

(14) A

B C

D E

F G

116, 541
c-selection Refers to categorial selection, wherein syntactic heads often specify what kind of
syntactic constituent they combine with, ex., a DP or a PP. 256, 579
case A property of noun phrases that marks their grammatical role within a sentence; often
capitalized as “Case” when understood to refer to an abstract syntactic feature, as opposed
to a morphologically overt distinction. Common examples include the nominative case and
the accusative case. 329, 567
case concord The sharing of Case features within a noun phrase. 360
Glossary 564

Case Filter 354, 567, see DP Licensing Requirement

causative A form of a verb that increases its number of arguments (valency) by one by adding a
second agent argument. The second agent causes or permits the first agent to do the action.
Examples:

(15) a. 아이가 옷을 입었다. Korean

Ai-ka os-ul ip-ess-ta.
child-nom clothes-acc put.on-pst-decl
‘The child put on clothes.’
b. 아빠가 아이한테 옷을 입혔다.
Appa-ka ai-hanthey os-ul ip-hy-ess-ta.
dad-nom child-dat clothes-acc put.on-pst-decl
‘Dad put clothes on the child.’

137
cause A thematic role assigned to a (perceivedly) nonsentient argument or one without will that
brings about a state of affairs. For example, in the sentence The sun melted all the snow, the
sun is the cause. 140, see also agent, instrument & causative
clause A constituent that contains a subject, possibly silent (in boldface), and a predicate (in
italics). Clauses can be subdivided into ordinary clauses and small clauses. Ordinary
clauses can be further subdivided into finite clauses, which can stand alone, and nonfinite
clauses, which can’t. All ordinary clauses contain an Infl element (underlined)—a modal,
auxiliary, silent tense morpheme, or the nonfinite marker to. Small clauses differ from
ordinary clauses in lacking an Infl element.

(16) a. Our friends must be in Cancun by now. Finite clause

b. Bill has never seen a racoon.
c. They are our friends.
d. Bill [past] arrived.

(17) a. (John seems) to be having problems. Nonfinite clause

b. (I expect) to know tomorrow.
c. (I expect) them to know tomorrow.
d. (We consider) them to be our friends.

(18) a. (They made) us do it. Small clause

b. (We consider) them our friends.

183,
closed class A syntactic category into which new words are not easily added. Functional cat-
egories are generally closed classes. Closed classes stand in contradistinction with open
classes. 42, 575
Glossary 565

competence The abstract knowledge about language as a formal system that humans carry in
their heads, as opposed to the physical sounds and signs of language that users actually
speak, sign, and mentally process (performance). See also the similar but distinct contrast
between E-language and I-language. 267
complement A constituent that is sibling to a lexical projection (i.e., a head) and child of an in-
termediate projection. Often “completes” the meaning of the lexical projection it is siblings
with. For example, blue cheese is a complement to eats in the sentence Stella often eats blue
cheese. 176, 579, see also adjunct & specifier
complementary distribution If two syntactic elements never appear in the same context, they
are said to be in complementary distribution. For example, the English infinitive particle
to only appears where the verb does not take any inflection (ex., -s or -ed), so infinitive to
and verbal inflection are in complementary distribution. 67
complementizer A word or morpheme that turns an independent sentence into the comple-
ment of a matrix verb, or an adjunct to a main clause. Examples in English include whether,
if, that, because, and while. 183, 569
compound tense A tense that is expressed analytically, for instance, the English present pro-
gressive she is singing or the French passé composé elle a chanté ‘she sang, she has sung’.
Compound tenses contrast with simple tenses, which are formed synthetically, like the
English simple past she sang or the French imparfait elle chantait ‘she used to sing, she
was singing’.
Compound tenses in one language can correspond functionally to simple tenses in another
language, and vice versa. For instance, the English compound present progressive corre-
sponds to a French simple present, whereas the English simple past often corresponds to a
French passé composé. , 579
constituent A unit of grammatical structure. Evidence for certain constituents comes from
constituenthood tests. In tree structures, constituents are represented as nodes. 93
control verb A subclass of the verbs that take to infinitive complements, superficially similar
to raising verbs. In contrast to the subject of a raising verb, however, the subject of a
control verb starts out in the same clause as the control verb itself, undergoing local A-
movement to subject position, but not raising out of an embedded clause. Accordingly,
the subject of the control verb’s nonfinite complement is not a trace of the matrix subject,
but rather a separate silent pronoun PRO, which is coindexed with the matrix subject. For
more discussion, see Chapter 11. , 578
Copy Theory of Movement The Copy Theory of Movement is a particular perspective in gen-
erative syntax about the representation of movement within the model. It says that any
movement construction does not relocate a syntactic element within a structure, but in-
stead copies that element and then adds that copy into the structure as well. So instead of
our model saying that movement consists of a moved element and a trace in its original po-
sition (as in the first example below), instead movement is as in second example, where the
original position of the moved element still contains the original version of that element,
it is now simply an unpronounced copy.
Glossary 566

(19) a. Whok are you going to visit t k today?

b. Whok are you going to visit whok today?

We generally represent unpronounced copies with strikeout (like this), though it is not
uncommon to still use traces to annotate movement in trees and examples because of the
visual simplicity of traces. , 569, 575, 581
count noun See Chapter 3, § 2.3.1
cyclic A derivation that decomposes apparently nonlocal movement into a sequence of local
movements is said to be cyclic. Each successive step in the sequence of movements is
correspondingly called a cycle. In contradistinction to movement in one fell swoop. The
term cyclic is also used more generally to refer to iterative syntactic operations, like the
Merge operation in modern syntactic theory. 510, 575
dative case A case form that canonically marks indirect objects in a sentence. 145
declarative A kind of sentence or clause that canonically expresses a statement. Examples:

(20) a. I like calico kittens quite a lot.

b. The band might not play next week.
c. Friends ought to stick together.

Note that declarative is a clause type (and is associated with certain morphosyntactic prop-
erties). Statements can also be made more indirectly using interrogative and imperative
clause types, for example.

(21) a. Did you know that sea turtles love pancakes? (interrogative)
b. Recall that every pair of integers sums to an integer. (imperative)

Possible declarative equivalents of these sentences are as below.

(22) a. Sea turtles love pancakes.

b. Every pair of integers sums to an integer.

, 572, 573
demotion 375, see grammatical relation
determiner A syntactic category that includes the definite article the, the indefinite article a
and its variant an, the demonstratives this and that, and ordinary and reflexive pronouns.
English also has a silent determiner, marked by in (23) below, which resembles some
in that it can be used with both mass nouns and plural count nouns.

(23) a. I see rice on the table.

b. I heard lions out in the bush last night.

203, 205
direct question See Chapter 8, § 8.1.2
Glossary 567

Distributed Morphology The predominant generative model of the syntax-morphology inter-

face (Halle and Marantz 1993). In Distributed Morphology (DM), some morphological
forms are lexical (items like heel and hill, which don’t change in realization), but others
are inserted during the derivation (for instance, sing is realized as sang under a past-tense
I◦ ), “distributing” the implementation of morphology across different parts of the genera-
tive linguistic architecture. DM crucially assumes Late Insertion of morphological forms,
wherein specific morphological forms are inserted late in the derivation, after the features
of the syntactic structure are determined. 358
do-support A phenomenon in English in which an unstressed auxiliary do is required to form
certain kinds of questions and negative sentences. Compare the following examples with
and without the insertion of an auxiliary do:

(24) a. Do killer whales eat krill?

(asking for information)
b. Killer whales eat krill?
(asking for confirmation, or expressing surprise; never a neutral request for in-
formation)
(25) a. I { do not, don’t } like mannequins.
b. * I like not mannequins.
c. * I not like mannequins.

See Chapter 12, § 12.2.2 for a detailed analysis of this phenomenon. 427
DP Licensing Requirement The requirement that all noun phrases which are also arguments
receive a Case value. Traditionally called the Case Filter. 354
dual A grammatical number that indicates two of a noun. Appears in most Arabic varieties,
Sanskrit, and Yup’ik, for example. See the discussion in Chapter 2, § 2.3.1. 49
E-language Stands for externalized language, and is used to refer to language as used by people:
actual spoken and perceived sentences, languages as we refer to them out in the world
(Swahili, Korean, etc), and other kinds of language-in-use, for instance, properties that
fall under sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, etc. E-language stands in contrast with I-
language. 28, 565, 572, 576
empirical Concerning or pertaining to data. In the context of this textbook, the relevant data
have to do with the grammatical status or the interpretation of phrases and sentences.
When you are asked to give an empirical argument, your argument must be based on judg-
ments concerning phrases or sentences, not on purely conceptual considerations like sim-
plicity, economy, theory-internal consistency, and so on.
EPP The requirement that a phrase move to a specifier position. Can be thought of as a require-
ment for an Extra Peripheral Position. The acronym originated from the concept of the
Extended Projection Principle, but is no longer used to mean this in the same way as it
originally was (see Haegeman 1994 for a summary). 355
ergative case A case form that canonically marks the agentive subject of a transitive sentence
in an ergative-absolutive case alignment. 357, 568
Glossary 568

ergative-absolutive case alignment A system of marking case relations that differs distinctly
from nominative-accusative case alignment. In the canonical form of this case system,
subjects of intransitive predicates and objects of transitive predicates are marked with the
same case (called absolutive case) and subjects of transitives (generally agents) are marked
with a distinct case form (called ergative case). 357, 561, 567, 575
event An action or a state and the participants in that action or state. In formal semantics, this
concept is instead referred to with the term “eventuality” (and the term “event” denotes an
action, specifically excluding states), but this textbook uses the term “event” to cover both
actions and states. 133, 581
evidence Here and throughout the book, we will use the term ‘evidence’ to refer to empirical
arguments for a conclusion, rather than in a more liberal sense in which it includes concep-
tual arguments based on theoretical virtues such as simplicity, economy, theory-internal
consistency, and so on. In other words, for us, the collocation ‘empirical evidence’ is re-
dundant.
Evidence consists of a linguistic expression (a sentence or phrase), along with a grammat-
icality judgment (✔ or *).
For instance, we might ask whether the underlined noun phrase in (26a) is a complement
or an adjunct of the italicized verb. The grammaticality of (26b) is evidence that it is an
adjunct (given assumptions spelled out in Chapter 5).

(26) a. They partied the entire weekend.

b. ✔ They did so the entire weekend.

What about the status of the same string in (27a)? In this case, it is the ungrammaticality
of (27b) that is evidence for the expression being a complement.

(27) a. They enjoyed the entire weekend.

b. * They did so the entire weekend.

35, 121, 170, 171

exceptional case marking (ECM) Describes a configuration where the subject of a nonfinite
complement clause receives structural accusative case from the matrix clause. Also some-
times referred to as “raising-to-object.”
experiencer A thematic role assigned to an argument that undergoes a sensory, cognitive, or
emotional experience. For example, in the sentence The suddenness of the news caught
Kaviya by surprise, Kaviya is the experiencer. 140, 581
expletive (from Latin explere ‘to fill out’) A syntactic argument that isn’t a semantic argument.
Sometimes also referred to as a ‘dummy pronoun’ or a ‘pleonastic pronoun.’ English ex-
amples are it and there, as in It is raining and There are children playing in the park. See
Chapter 4, § 4.5.1 for more discussion. 4
feature Characteristics of a syntactic constituent which may take on a finite number of values.
Features are usually annotated inside [square brackets]. Examples include gender , num-
ber, and person for nouns and noun phrases and clause type (declarative or interrogative)
Glossary 569

for complementizers. The specific values a feature can take on vary by language; for exam-
ple, English generally distinguishes declarative, interrogative, and imperative clause types,
while Korean distinguishes a fourth propositive/cohortative clause type. 49, 181, 307, 561,
562
feature-driven Refers to an analytical approach wherein operations in syntax don’t happen
freely, but they are triggered, or initiated, by a feature in the syntax. 307
finite Finite verbs are verbs that are inflected for tense and person-number agreement. Finite
clauses are clauses that can stand alone. See Chapter 3, § 2.9 for more discussion. 421
floating quantifier Certain quantificational modifiers of nouns are able to “float” away from
the noun that they modify. In English this includes all and both. Floating quantifiers are
used to diagnose syntactic movement. 262
flout Refers to a phenomenon where speakers may choose to use aspects of languages in ways
that intentionally depart from their canonical uses, for interpretive effect. Often used to
discuss flouting Gricean maxims to create implicatures within pragmatics. 257
focus A subcategory of emphasis constructions. Focused phrases tend to be contrastive with
some other relevant set of alternatives. So I ATE an apple is interpreted to mean that I ate
an apple, as opposed to doing something else with the apple. 98, 310
formative A general term for an abstract meaning unit. Like morphemes, formatives can be
pronounced or silent, but they needn’t be minimal meaning units.
free morpheme A morpheme that can stand alone, like cat or happy. In contrast, bound mor-
phemes, like plural -s, un-, or -ness) are part of a larger word. 417, 563
full noun phrase Any noun phrase that is not an ordinary pronoun or reflexive pronoun.
Examples: John, the boy next door, the dog that ate the homework, a lame excuse, the problem
with them, and Annabelle’s confidence in herself.
As the last two examples show, a full noun phrase can contain an ordinary or reflexive
pronoun; it just can’t entirely consist of one.
functional category A syntactic category that serves purely grammatical functions, without
much semantic (meaningful) content, for example determiner, complementizer, and inflec-
tion. Less strictly, also refers to lexical items in such categories, such as any, whether, and
might. 41, 564, 573
gap A gap is a pre-theoretical way of referring to the empty position in an extraction construc-
tion where a moved element would typically be located.

(28) a. What did you eat for lunch?

b. The friend who I always like to visit in Paris.

In our model gaps are traces (or unpronounced copies, within the Copy Theory of Move-
ment). 500
gender Grammatical gender is a set of mutually exclusive word classes for nouns and pronouns.
In many languages, the genders of pronouns correspond to the biological sexes, but the
gender assignment for nouns is typically more arbitrary. This is illustrated in (29) for Ger-
Glossary 570

man, a language with three genders: masculine (m), feminine (f), and neuter (n).

(29) a. die Wache, das Mädchen

the.f sentinel, the.n girl
‘the sentinel (male or female), the girl’
b. der Hund, die Katze
the.m dog, the.f cat
‘the dog (male or female), the cat (male or female)’
c. der Tisch, die Tasse, das Fenster
the.m table, the.f cup, the.n window
‘the table, the cup, the window’

English doesn’t have gender as a grammatical feature, since the so-called genders of pro-
nouns like he and she simply correspond to the sex of the person being referred to. In
languages with so-called “noun class” systems, grammatical genders (i.e. noun classes) are
not correlated with human sex/gender in any way. Many Bantu languages have 15-20 noun
classes, for example, with classes that correlate to humans, to inanimates, and locations,
but no correlation to human genders. , 568
goal A thematic role assigned to an argument that is the endpoint of a path. For example, in the
sentence Last summer I flew to Korea to see my grandmother, to Korea is the goal. 141, see
also location
government Traditionally used to refer to the requirement of certain verbs and prepositions for
their complements to appear in a particular case form. In generative grammar, the sense
of the term has been extended to refer to the structural relation between a head and its
complement.
grammatical relation The grammatical relations in a sentence are listed in (30); see Chapter 4,
§ 4.4 for more discussion. They are often conceived of in a ranking: formally in some
theoretical approaches, informally in others.

(30) subject direct object indirect object object of preposition

promotion demotion

Various syntactic operations can change the grammatical relation of a noun phrase. De-
pending on whether a noun phrase moves “up” or “down” the hierarchy in (30), the noun
phrase is said to be promoted or demoted. For instance, the passive in English demotes
the subject of an active sentence to the object of the preposition by. In addition, it promotes
the object to subject. 143, 375
ground The part of a sentence that contains background information that is presupposed, al-
ready part of the pool of “common knowledge” shared by both speakers, or part of the
set of topics already under discussion. For instance, my dog is the ground in the sentence
My dog likes to run about in the summer, since the existence of the speaker’s dog is pre-
supposed, commonly known by both participants in the conversation, and likely already
under discussion. 98
Glossary 571

head The term head has three different meanings in syntactic theory. First, in the theory of
phrase structure, the term refers to the syntactic and semantic core of a phrase. In X′ theory,
the particular theory of phrase structure used in this book, a head projects an intermediate
and maximal projection, along with optional arguments.
Second, the head of a movement chain is simply the highest element in the chain. In the
case of verb movement, the head in the chain sense happens to be a head in the X′ sense.
But when a maximal projection moves, the head of the chain is a maximal projection.
Third, the term head can refer to the noun that is modified by a relative clause. Given our
analysis of relative clauses as involving wh-movement, and hence a movement chain (see
Chapter 13), this usage is potentially especially confusing. In the relative clauses in (31),
the head of the relative clause in this third sense is italicized, whereas the head of the chain
formed by movement of the relative clause is underlined.

(31) a. the book [CP [DP which]i I am reading t i .]

b. the author [CP [DP whose book]i I like t i best.]

, 571, 578
head movement Movement of a syntactic head to adjoin to another, higher syntactic head.
One English example is the movement of modals and auxiliary do to C◦ in forming yes-no
questions—for details, see Chapter 8, § 8.2. 280, 301, 420, 575
homograph One of two or more linguistic forms that are spelled alike, but different in function
or meaning or in pronunciation.

Example:
bank ‘river bank’ and bank ‘financial institution’ (different meaning)
read (infinitive) and read (participle) (different pronunciation)

, 571, 582, see also homophone, homonym & word

homonym Can refer to either homograph or homophone.
homophone One of two or more linguistic forms that are pronounced alike, but distinct in
function or meaning or in spelling.

Examples:
bank ‘river bank’ and bank ‘financial institution’ (same spelling, different meaning)
reed and read (infinitive); red and read (participle) (related meaning, different spelling)

63, 64, 571, 582, see also homograph, homonym & word
hypercorrection The psychological process of constructing a non-prescribed linguistic form by
analogy to a prescribed form. Also the resulting form itself. Example: They feel badly, by
analogy to They drive badly. The prescribed form is They feel bad. In They drive badly, badly
modifies drive, which is an ordinary verb. In They feel bad, on the other hand, feel is a
linking verb, and bad is a predicative adjective (it predicates a particular property of the
subject of the sentence; in other words, it attributes the property to the subject).
Glossary 572

They feel badly is acceptable in prescriptions for so-called “standard” English only if it is
the verb feel that is being modified; that is, if the sentence is intended to mean They have a
bad sense of touch.
As always, note that the prescribed “standard” form is not a cognitive or linguistic status,
but a social move to privilege one form of speaking over others. 30
I-language Stands for internalized language, and is used to refer to mental grammar, i.e. the
knowledge that speakers have about their own languages. I-language stands in specific
contrast with E-language. 28, 565, 567, 576
idiom A sequence of words whose fixed, specific, and nonliteral meaning cannot be derived
(more or less straightforwardly) from its parts. For example, in English, red refers to a
color and herring to a kind of fish, but the expression red herring has the fixed, specific,
and nonliteral meaning ‘misleading clue’. This meaning cannot be derived directly from
the words in the expression without knowing the associated story. 269
imperative A kind of sentence or clause that canonically expresses a command or request. Ex-
amples:

(32) a. Come downstairs this instant!

b. Please don’t be so petty.
c. Just let me know when you’re free.

Note that imperative is a clause type (and hence is associated with, in English, a certain form
of the verb). Commands or requests can also be made using declarative and interrogative
clause types, for example.

(33) a. I’d really appreciate you helping out with the cows. (declarative)
b. Would you mind giving me another week? (interrogative)

Possible imperative equivalents of these sentences are as below.

(34) a. Come help out with the cows.

b. Give me another week.

152, 566, 569, 573

indirect question See Chapter 8, § 8.1.2
inherent case Inherent case refers to case forms that are idiosyncratically based on lexical items.
For example, some verbs or prepositions assign a particular case form to their objects that is
not the normal object case form in that language. Inherent case is sometimes characterized
as being attached to a particular thematic role as well: for example, in some languages
expeRienceRs are expressed with dative case even when they are the subject of a sentence.
333
instrument A thematic role assigned to a (perceivedly) nonsentient argument or one without
will that is used to bring about a state of affairs. For example, in the sentence The chef
julienned the celery with their new knife, their new knife is the instrument. 140, 562, see also
agent & cause
Glossary 573

interrogative A kind of sentence or clause that canonically expresses a question. Examples:

(35) a. Who’s running for Taiko Club president this semester?

b. Did Basil know his portrait was aging in Dorian’s stead?
c. Will the final exam be cumulative?

Note that interrogative is a clause type (and hence is associated with, in English, a certain
intonation and certain kinds of syntactic movements). Questions can also be posed using
declarative and imperative clause types, for example.

(36) a. Sorry, I can’t quite seem to remember your name. (declarative)

b. Remind me where we decided to go for dinner. (imperative)

Possible interrogative equivalents of these sentences are as below.

(37) a. Sorry, what’s your name?

b. Where did we decide to go for dinner again?

, 566, 572
intransitive Traditionally used of verbs that take no object. We use the term in a more gen-
eral sense to refer to any syntactic category that takes no complement. For instance, the
italicized heads are transitive in the (a) examples, but intransitive in their (b) counterparts.

(38) a. We have eaten the pizza. verb

b. We have eaten.
(39) a. They crawled underneath the table. preposition
b. They crawled underneath.
(40) a. I like that radio. determiner
b. I like that.

135, see also transitive

Late Insertion The idea that some morphological forms are decided on and inserted into a sen-
tence after the sentence is already built by other syntactic operations. 358, 567
left periphery Refers to the structurally high parts of a clause (the CP-domain) with left-
branching heads and specifiers. 309
lexeme 14, 573, see word
lexical ambiguity The association of a single word with more than one lexeme. 14, 583
lexical category A syntactic category that has some semantic (meaningful) content, for example
noun, adjective, or verb. Less strictly, also refers to lexical items in such categories, such as
cat, flashy, or hunt. Appears in contradistinction with the concept of a functional category.
41, 575
Glossary 574

lexical knowledge Linguistic knowledge that must be memorized and cannot be derived from
rules or broader patterns. For example, the fact that cat is a noun and the fact that it
refers a particular class of furry, four-legged, whiskered animals are both pieces of lexical
knowledge; a child who has never heard the word cat cannot deduce these facts from rules
they have previously encountered, or based on the sounds of the phonemes themselves.
Rather, these properties of cat must simply be memorized by a learner of English. The
abstract collection of lexical knowledge is called the lexicon. 265
lexicon The abstract collection of linguistic knowledge that must be memorized and cannot
be derived from rules or broader patterns. Can be thought of as a mental “dictionary”
that holds not just the meanings of words, but also their syntactic (and other linguistic)
properties. 265, 574, see lexical knowledge
linking verb Also known as copular verb. One of a class of verbs including the copula be, as
well as (among others) appear, become, feel, get, grow, look, prove, seem, smell, sound, taste,
and turn, when used as in (41).

(41) a. They { are, appear, became, grew, look, proved, seem } competent.
b. It { feels, looks, smells, sounds, tastes } fine.
c. He { became, got, grew } old.
d. It turned rancid.

2, 571, see also hypercorrection

location A thematic role assigned to arguments that are points or regions in space. For example,
in the sentence The gerbils congregated underground, underground is the location. 141, 562,
576, see also path & goal
mass noun See Chapter 3, § 2.3.1
matrix A structure that contains another structure. Typically used in the collocation ‘matrix
clause,’ referring to a CP or IP that contains another CP or IP. 183, 565
measure A thematic role assigned to an argument that expresses extension along some dimen-
sion (length, duration, temperature, and so on). For example, in the sentence The gymnast
flipped a full seven hundred and twenty degrees before landing gracefully, a full seven hundred
and twenty degrees is the measure. 142
morpheme A minimal meaning-bearing element.
Words are not necessarily the smallest meaning-bearing elements in a language. For in-
stance, cats is a single word, but consists of two morphemes, cat and the plural morpheme
-s. Unhappiness consists of the three morphemes un-, happy, and -ness.
Morphemes can be free or bound. Free morphemes (like cat and happy) can stand alone,
whereas bound morphemes (like -s, un-, and -ness) cannot. A trailing hyphen indicates that
a bound morpheme is a prefix; a leading hyphen indicates a suffix. 137, 563, 569, see also
bound morpheme & free morpheme
morphological case Refers to the overtly marked morphological changes in nominals that arise
in different syntactic positions. For instance, the English first-person singular pronoun
Glossary 575

(usually) appears as I when occurring as the subject of a sentence, but appears as me when
occurring as the object of a verb or preposition, so we say that I is in the “nominative case”
(or “subjective case”) and me is in the “accusative case” (or “objective case”). Traditionally
spelled with lowercase in the syntax literature in contradistinction with uppercase abstract
Case. 337, 561
movement In syntactic theory, constituents often move from one position to another. The
presence of movement in syntactic theory reflects the assumption that human syntac-
tic knowledge sometimes represents constituents in multiple positions. Examples include
A-movement, A′-movement, raising, head movement, and subject movement. Newer ap-
proaches often theorize that movement of constituents is actually copying of constituents;
see Copy Theory of Movement for more. 261, 273, 561, 562, 565, 569, 571, 577, 580, 581
negative polarity item A syntactic element that can typically only occur together with neg-
ative words such as no, never, hardly, and barely; the negative word is said to license the
negative polarity item. Often abbreviated as NPI. In the examples below, NPIs are italicized
and their licensers are underlined.

(42) a. I *(never) see you anymore.

b. She *(hardly) ever comes to the office.
c. *(Not) just anyone would make a good mayor.

542
nominal Of or relating to a noun or its projections (N, N′ , NP); more generally, of or relating to
a noun phrase (DP). 204
nominative case A case form that canonically marks subjects of transitive sentences and sub-
jects of intransitive sentences in a nominative-accusative case alignment. 145, 331, 563,
575
nominative-accusative case alignment A system of marking case relations that differs dis-
tinctly from ergative-absolutive case alignment. Subjects of transitives and subjects of in-
transitives are marked with the same case form (called nominative case) and objects of
transitives are marked with a distinct case (accusative case). 356, 561, 568, 575
OED Oxford English Dictionary
one fell swoop A derivation in which nonlocal movement occurs in a single step is said to occur
in one fell swoop. This is in contrast to movements that occur via a series of local move-
ments (as in a cyclic derivation). The name comes from Shakespeare’s Macbeth, where it
describes a bird of prey taking an entire nest of chicks for prey in one single terrible (“fell”)
swoop. 510, 566
open class A syntactic category into which new words may be added relatively easily. Lexical
categories are generally open classes. Open classes stand in contradistinction with closed
classes. 42, 564
ordinary pronoun Synonymous with “personal pronoun.” The following table lists the English
ordinary pronouns.
Glossary 576

Possessive forms
Person Number Subject forms Object forms
Short Long
1 I me my mine
2 sg you you your yours
3 he, she, they, it him, her, them, it his, her, their, its his, hers, theirs, its
1 we us our ours
2 pl you you your yours
3 they them their theirs

Table 15.1: English personal pronouns

147, 569, see also full noun phrase

path A thematic role assigned to an argument that connects locations. For example, in the
sentence The maenads danced through the woods, through the woods is the path. 141, 570,
see also goal
performance The actual language that humans speak, sign, and mentally process, as opposed
to the abstract knowledge about language as a formal system that they have. See also the
similar but distinct distinction between I-language and E-language. 267, 565
phase A phase in current generative syntactic theory refers to a portion of syntactic structure
that is built and then transferred to LF and PF, after which it cannot be further modified. It
demarcates chunks of the syntax where structure is built. This text doesn’t properly engage
phases, the interested reader is recommended to consult Citko (2014). 511
phi-feature A feature of a noun or noun phrase; examples include noun class/gender, number,
and person. Also written “𝜑-feature”. 52, see also feature
Plato’s problem “How do we know so much with so little evidence?” The idea comes from a
philosophical tradition that posits innate knowledge, and explores the apparent gap be-
tween our knowledge and our experiences that resulted in that knowledge. Applied to
language, we appear to have more grammatical knowledge about our language(s) than the
input that we learned from would suggest. The idea is that language reveals innate prop-
erties of human cognition. Its application to language acquisition is called the argument
from the poverty of the stimulus. 16, see also poverty of the stimulus
postposition A head-final P. Coined in order to avoid the expression ’head-final preposition’,
which offends the etymologically-inclined as a contradiction in terms. See Chapter 6 for
examples. 229, see also adposition
poverty of the stimulus The fact that it appears that children are exposed to a smaller amount
of natural language data than would be necessary to explain the extent of the grammati-
cal knowledge that they have. Generative linguistics proposes Universal Grammar as the
solution to this puzzle. 16, 576, see also Plato’s problem
predicate The term ‘predicate’ in linguistics has two distinct (though related) senses, what we
will call the subject-predicate sense and the predicate-argument sense.
The subject-predicate sense derives from traditional logic, where propositions are divided
Glossary 577

into two parts, the subject and the predicate, and the predicate is what is affirmed (or de-
nied) as an attribute of the subject.
In the history of formal logic, this original sense was generalized to include relations miss-
ing more than a single argument. In the resulting predicate-argument sense, in linguistics,
the term ‘predicate’ refers to a head that expresses a logical relation. Typically, predicates
in this sense are verbs, but other types of heads can function as predicates in this sense as
well.
The two senses are illustrated in (43) and (44). The predicate is underlined; notice that the
two senses can pick out the same expression, as in the examples (43b) and (44b).

(43) a. Bill gives money to charity. Subject-predicate sense

b. Bill swims.
(44) a. Bill gives money to charity. Predicate-argument sense
b. Bill swims.
c. Sheila’s criticism of the plan.

132, 562, see also argument

pro-form It is convenient to group together pronouns and expressions like do so and one as
pro-forms (< Latin pro ‘instead of’).
Note that the traditional term ‘pronoun’ is misleading, since pronouns substitute for entire
noun phrases, not just for nouns (the fact that Latin has no articles may explain the tra-
ditional term). A more accurate term for pronouns would therefore be pro–noun phrases;
however, we continue to use the traditional term, at least where there is no danger of con-
fusion.
promotion 375, 562, see grammatical relation
proposition An expression in language of something that is either true or false: a potential fact.
Put another way, it can be thought of as a complete thought. So a single noun phrase like a
cat is not a complete thought: it is not something that can be true or false and therefore is
not a proposition. But the sentence I saw a cat can potentially be true or false, and therefore
is a proposition.
The same proposition can be expressed by different linguistic forms. Conversely, the same
linguistic form can express different propositions.
Examples:
Same meaning, different form: Aliens have abducted Eleanor. Eleanor has been abducted by
aliens.
Same form, different meaning: We last saw Eleanor an hour ago (spoken on December 11,
2000 at 3 pm vs. on January 14, 2002 at 5 am). 133
raising The movement of a subject from an embedded clause to a matrix clause. , 565, 575, 578,
see also control verb & raising verb
raising verb A subclass of the verbs that takes to infinitive complements, superficially similar to
Glossary 578

control verbs. Raising verbs lack a specifier position and fail to assign case. In contrast to
the subjects of a control verb, the subject of a raising verb starts out as the subject of that
verb’s nonfinite complement clause and becomes the matrix subject by subject raising—
hence, the name of the class. For more discussion, see Chapter 11. , 565
recipient A thematic role assigned to an argument that receives something, good or bad. For
example, in the sentence I gave my mother a call, my mother is the recipient. 141, 562, 581,
see also benefactive
reflexive pronoun The English reflexive pronouns are easy to identify because they all contain
a form of the morpheme self, as laid out in the following table.

1 2 3
himself
sg myself yourself herself
itself
pl ourselves yourselves themselves

Table 15.2: English reflexive pronouns

, 569, see also full noun phrase

relative clause A relative clause is a kind of embedded clause that is used to modify a nominal.
The standard formulation involves a gap within the relative clause, with the gap corre-
sponding to the head of the relative clause.

(45) a. The small puppy [ that tore up the couch ].

b. The couch [ that the small puppy tore up ].

Many languages involve multiple related-but-distinct strategies for forming relative

clauses. For example, English has relative clauses with that-complementizers and relative
clauses that use wh-phrases.

(46) a. The small puppy [ which tore up the couch ].

b. The couch [ which the small puppy tore up ].

Generative syntax models analyze relative clauses as instances of wh-movement of an overt

or covert operator (a wh-phrase) from the thematic position inside the relative clause to
Spec,CP of the relative clause (creating the gap). Relative clauses tend to have properties
that parallel a language’s other A’-properties. 500
resumptive pronoun A pronoun that shares a referent and original position with the syntac-
tic position of a phrase that has been extracted or is left-dislocated. For instance, in the
sentence As for ice cream, it’s not my favorite, it is a pronoun that “resumes” the noun ice
cream. 312
s-selection Refers to semantic selection. Lexical items often place semantic requirements of
various sorts on their arguments, and s-selection refers to these kinds of requirements. For
example, a predicate might require an animate subject, or a human subject. , 579
Glossary 579

scope The level of syntactic structure that the interpretation of a given syntactic element applies
to is said to be that element’s scope. If a syntactic element B is in the scope of another
element A, A is said to take scope over B. For example, in (47a), the negative not takes
scope over the modal can, yielding the paraphrased interpretation in (47b). In (48a), the
modal can takes scope over the negative not, yielding the paraphrased interpretation in
(48b).

(47) a. The orangutan cannot read the book.

b. Paraphrase: It is not the case that the orangutan can read the book.
(The orangutan is illiterate, or the book is out of reach.)
(48) a. The orangutan can NOT read the book.
b. Paraphrase: It is possible for the orangutan to not read the book.
(The orangutan is free to choose NOT to read the book.)

100, 513
selectional restrictions Lexical items place different kinds of requirements on the elements
they combine with: we refer to these requirements as selectional restrictions. Selectional
restrictions can be about syntactic requirements (c-selection) or semantic requirements (s-
selection), but used on its own the term tends to refer to s-selection. 256
simple tense A tense that is expressed synthetically, for instance, the English simple past she
sang or the French imparfait elle chantait ‘she used to sing, she was singing’. Simple tenses
contrast with compound tenses, which are formed analytically, like the English present
progressive she is singing or the French passé composé elle a chanté ‘she sang, she has sung’.
Simple tenses in one language can correspond functionally to compound tenses in another
language, and vice versa. For instance, the English simple past corresponds to a French
passé composé, whereas the English compound present progressive often corresponds to a
French simple present. 425, 447, 565
small clause A clause containing predication without any inflection (in English, morphemes
indicating tense and person information). See the examples below, in which the small
clauses are italicized.

(49) He found the turtleneck a tad too posh.

(cf. The turtleneck was a tad too posh.)
(50) I watched the snowflakes dance on the wind.
(cf. The snowflakes danced on the wind.)
(51) I consider them my closest friend.
(cf. They are my closest friend.)

See Chapter 4, § 4.5.3 for more. 151

specifier A constituent that is sibling to an intermediate projection and child of a maximal pro-
jection. Also see complement, adjunct. 177
Glossary 580

spellout rule Rules that specify how combinations of lexical, morphological, and syntactic fea-
tures are realized morphologically (i.e., pronounced). 472
stative A form of a verb that changes its meaning from an action to a state. Often associated with
perfects, from which they can develop (for instance in Ancient Greek, Middle Egyptian).
Example:

(52) a. ドアが 開く。 Japanese

Doa-ga ak-u.
door-nom open-npst
‘The door opens.’
b. ドアが 開いている。
Doa-ga ai-tei-ru.
door-nom open-stative-npst
‘The door is open.’

137
structural case Structural case refers to case forms that are assigned to nominals in particular
structural configurations, such as sentential subject or object of a transitive verb. 333
subcategorization Lexical items are said to be subcategorized according to the syntactic prop-
erties of their complement. For instance, verbs can be subcategorized according to whether
their elementary tree has a complement or not, according to the syntactic category of the
complement (CP, DP, IP, PP, and so on), according to other syntactic properties of the com-
plement, (for instance, finiteness, case, and so on).
subject See Chapter 4, § 4.4.1 9, 564, 565, 577, 578, 580
subject movement Movement of a subject within a single clause (as opposed to subject raising).
Usually, the term refers to the movement of a subject from Spec(VP) to Spec(IP). But the
term can be used more generally to include movement from Spec(NP) to Spec(DP). , 575
subject raising , 580, see raising
subject requirement The requirement that subjects appear in sentences. This requirement ap-
pears to be purely syntactic (that is, independent of semantic considerations). 147
subject-aux inversion The process that forms a yes-no question from the corresponding declar-
ative sentence. In declarative sentences containing a modal, an auxiliary, or main verb be,
subject-aux inversion consists in switching the order of the subject and that element (high-
lighted by italics below).

(53) a. He should apply to both schools. Modal

b. Should he apply to both schools?
(54) a. The guy she met last night is coming along. Auxiliary be
b. Is the guy she met last night coming along?
(55) a. They do have to clean their room. Auxiliary do
b. Do they have to clean their room?
Glossary 581

(56) a. The mail has come. Auxiliary have

b. Has the mail come?
(57) a. They are superbly qualified. Main verb be
b. Are they superbly qualified?

97, 301
syncretic When referring to case forms, this refers to an instance where a single case form
corresponds to more than one case function (ex., the same case form being used for both
dative and accusative functions). 336
syntactic category Words are classified into syntactic categories based on their syntactic dis-
tributions, that is, what positions they appear in in sentences. Examples include both cat-
egories that correspond to traditional “part of speech” categories (ex., nouns, verbs, ad-
jectives, and determiners), as well as categories that have no counterpart (ex., inflection,
complementizer). 21, 564, 569, 573, 575
syntactic island A configuration in which movement is blocked. 107
tense A linguistic category associated with temporal reference (what is the relation of the time of
the event under discussion to the time of speaking?) as well as with aspect (is the speaker’s
focus on the event’s inception, completion, duration, repetition, general truth, and so on?).
, 569, see also finite
thematic role A specific kind of role in an event; specific thematic roles appear consistently
across languages. Examples include agent, theme, and recipient. Within the generative
syntactic framework these are often referred to as 𝜃-roles (theta-roles), with specific prop-
erties associated with them. , 562–564, 568, 570, 572, 574, 576, 578, 581
theme A (catch-all) thematic role assigned to an argument that undergoes motion, a change of
state, or is most affected by an event. For example, in the sentence The architect built a new
library, the theme is a new library. 142, 581
theta role A thematic role assigned to particular arguments of a predicate, generally notated in
small caps. Examples include agent, theme, and expeRienceR. Also written 𝜃-role. 281,
582
trace A trace is an annotation strategy to show movement in a syntactic analysis. The trace
(t) marks the original position of an element, where an element moved from. A trace is
often attached to a subscript to make clear what element moved from that trace (so t k is
coindexed with who in the example below).

(58) Whok are you going to visit t k today?

In earlier versions of generative syntactic theory, traces were theoretical entities with their
own properties and principles attached to them. In current versions of generative syntac-
tic theory, traces are simply an annotation strategy for unpronounced copies of moved
elements (see the Copy Theory of Movement). 274, 569
transitive Traditionally used of verbs that take a single object. We use the term in a more
general sense to refer to any syntactic category that takes a single complement. 135, see
Glossary 582

also intransitive
unaccusative Unaccusative predicates lack an external (i.e. agentive) argument, generally being
intransitive predicates with a theme subject. 387
unergative Unergative predicates lack an internal (object) argument, generally being intransi-
tive predicates with an agent subject. 387
Uniform Theta Assignment Hypothesis (UTAH) The hypothesis (due to Baker 1988) that
Universal Grammar specifies that each theta role is assigned to a particular structural po-
sition. 281, 388
valency The number of syntactic arguments a verb combines with. See Chapter 4, § 4.1.3 for
further discussion. 135, 562, 564
VP-Internal Subject Hypothesis The hypothesis within generative syntax that the subjects of
sentences originate inside the verb phrase. Put another way, all arguments of verbs have
an original position inside the verb phrase even if they move to another position during
the course of building the structure of the sentence. 261, 582
VPISH See VP-Internal Subject Hypothesis. 261
wh-question A question that asks for some kind of lexical information. So named because
in English, they often (but not always) begin with words spelled with an initial wh- like
who, what, when, where, why, or which. Like yes-no questions, they can less canonically
be felicitously answered with expressions of uncertainty, probability, or inference. For
example,

(59) a. Q: When did you last see Mom?

b. A: { Last year , Two days ago , 3 June 2003 , Not sure , # Yes , # No }.
(60) a. Q: How did you get to school?
b. A: { By bike , The bus , I walked , Can’t recall , # Yes , # No }.

See Chapter 8, § 8.1.1 for more. 293

word The term ‘word’ has at least three distinct meanings.
1. An orthographic word is a particular sequence of written characters. Bank in the
sense of ‘river bank’ and ‘financial institution’ are the same orthographic word, as are
read as an infinitive (to read a book), as a past tense form (I read the book), and as a
past participle (I have read the book).
See also homograph, homophone.
2. A word form is a linguistic form of a particular grammatical type. For instance,
cut can be an infinitive (to cut), a present tense form (Whenever I stuff envelopes, I
cut myself ), a past tense form (Yesterday, I cut myself ), or a past participle (I have
cut myself again). In this case, four distinct word forms are associated with a single
orthographic word.
3. A lexeme is an abstract meaning unit that can subsume several different word forms.
For instance, the lexeme be subsumes the eight word forms am, are, be, been, being, is,
was, and were. The lexeme cut subsumes the three word forms cut, cuts, and cutting.
Glossary 583

In lexical ambiguity, the same orthographic word is associated with more than one
lexeme, as in the case of bank ‘river bank’ and bank ‘financial institution’.
, 573
yes-no question A question that can only be answered felicitously with “yes”, “no”, or less
canonically some expression of uncertainty, probability, or inference. For example,

(61) a. Q: Did Dad make pancakes for breakfast?

b. A: i. { Yes , No , Maybe , I’m not sure , I don’t know , Sure smells like it }.
ii. # { Waffles , Bananas , Mom , Lunch , Dinner }.

See Chapter 8, § 8.1.1 for more. 293, 580, 582

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