Installment 12a. Commentary, and the beginning of wh-movement

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CAS LX 522Syntax I

• Installment 12a. Commentary, and the beginning of
  wh-movement
• (9.1-9.3)

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While thinking about syntax

• Before finishing his homework,Ike watched TV.
• Finish transitive (Agent, Theme)
• Agent ?
• Theme his homework
• Watch transitive (Agent, Theme)
• Agent Ike
• Theme TV
• Ike watched TV is the main clause.
• Before finishing his homework is a modifier.

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While thinking about syntax

• Before finishing his homework,Ike watched TV.
• Intuitively, it is Ike who was (at least at risk
  of) finishing his homework.
• We are not going to have any particular
  explanation for exactly how the interpretation
  tied to the subject comes about, but it seems to
  be.
• Before he finished his homework,Ike watched TV.

4
While PRO thinking about syntax

• Before PRO finishing his homework,
• This PRO does seem to be controlled by the
  subject somehow (While raining, Ike dashed to
  the store).
• The form finishing is not the progressive, it is
  the present participle, a nonfinite form.

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Before PRO finishing

• T is not finite, so no tense feature.
• It is not the infinitive either.
• Well say this form has the ing feature.
• The uInfl feature of v is matched, valued, and
  checked by the ing feature, resulting in
  finishing.

CP
TP
Cbefore
T?
DPPRO
Ting
vP
v?
ltDPgt
uInfling
v
VP
Vfinish
v
DPhis homework
ltVgt
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Before PRO finishing

• How does PRO get its case feature checked?
• Some relevant sentences
• Before he finished his homework, Ike watched TV.
• Before Ikes finishing of his homework, tension
  was high.

CP
TP
Cbefore
T?
DPPRO
Ting
vP
v?
ltDPgt
v
VP
Vfinish
v
DPhis homework
ltVgt
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Before PRO finishing

• Given this, the best hypothesis seems to be that
  the ing T also has a null feature, checking
  case with PRO just like finite T checks
  nominative case with other subjects.
• null ucasenull

CP
TP
Cbefore
T?
DPPRO
Ting
vP
v?
ltDPgt
v
VP
Vfinish
v
DPhis homework
ltVgt
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Before PRO finishing

• The only thing left is to attach the modifier
  into the main clause

CP
TP
ØC
TP
CP
T?
DPIke
TP
Cbefore
Tpast
vP
T?
DPPRO
v?
ltDPgt
Ting
vP
v
VP
v?
ltDPgt
Vwatch
v
DPTV
ltVgt
v
VP
Vfinish
v
DPhis homework
ltVgt
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Before his cooking of the t(of)urkey, Ike had
never opened the oven before.
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On gerunds

• There is yet another form of the verb that shows
  up with -ing on the end of it in English the
  gerund.
• A gerund is basically a verb acting as a noun
  weve been looking at this kind of deverbal noun
  already. One way to tell whether you are looking
  at a gerund (noun) or not (a verb) is to see
  whether it is modified by adjectives or adverbs
• Before his quick(ly) cooking of the t(of)urkey
• Before quick-(ly) finishing his homework

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Nonverbal predicates

• Nonverbal predicatesMain clauses seem to need a
  T (and a finite one at that), and in English at
  least, it seems that we further need a v.
• However, there are sentences in which the main
  predicate really isnt verbal
• Frankie is a pathologist.
• Boyd is grumpy.
• Here the verb be seems to be doing not much more
  than gluing the subject to the predicate.

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Nonverbal predicates

• This is slightly sticky terrain, but as a first
  hypothesis, suppose that Boyd is grumpy looks
  like this
• That is, we have an auxiliary Pred, realized as
  be, that moves to T
• its uInfl feature is strong when valued by a
  tense feature.

CP
TP
CØ
T?

Tpres
PredP
Predbe
AdjP
DPBoyd
Adjgrumpy
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Zoe is likely to stay in Chile
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Wh-questions

• Wh-questions are information-seeking questions,
  involving a wh-word.
• Who, what, when, where, why, HoW, which
• What will they bake?
• Observe that what is basically the object of
  bake. And look how far away it is from bake, the
  thing that assigns it a q-role.
• Cf also. echo questions I drank WHAT?
• Also, notice that T has moved to C here too (like
  it does in yes-no questions).

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wh

• Wh-words are a little bit like pronouns, standing
  in for whatever category of thing wed like
  information about.
• These interrogative expressions are different
  from non-interrogative pronouns and
  demonstratives.
• That will they bake.
• What, where, when are differentiated from that,
  there, then in being interrogative. This is a
  feature of the wh-word wh.

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wh

• A wh-word has the same category as its
  non-wh-counterparttherefore, wh-words come in
  several different categories.
• What wh, D
• Who wh, D, human
• When wh, Adv, temporal
• Where wh, Adv, locational
• How wh, Adv, manner
• Why wh, Adv, reason
• Which wh, D, uN

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How are wh-questions formed?

• What we have in English wh-questions is like a
  limited form of V2.
• The analysis of wh-questions is the same
• The T head moves to C
• The wh-expression moves to SpecCP
• Lets suppose that the reason/mechanism moving T
  to C is the same as in yes-no questions We have
  an interrogative C, with clause-typeQ. When
  the uclause-type feature of T is valued by
  Q, it is strong.

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What will they bake?

• To start out, we have a vP and TP as usual. The
  only unusual thing so far is that we have a
  wh-object what.

TP
T?
DPthey
Twill uclause-type
vP
ltDPgt
v?
VP
v
ltVgt
DPwhatwh
Vbake
v
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What will they bake?

• The complementizer C has the information about
  clause-type, and this is a question. As before
  with yes-no questions, we assume that this C has
  the feature clause-typeQ (or Q for short).
• As with yes-no questions, the uclause-type
  feature of T is strong when valued by Q.

C?
TP
CQ
T?
DPthey
Twill uclause-type
vP
ltDPgt
v?
VP
v
ltVgt
DPwhatwh
Vbake
v
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What will they bake?

• As for how what winds up at the beginning of the
  sentence, we will treat this essentially like we
  treated German V2.
• In a wh-question, C has a uwh feature.
• This forces what to move into SpecCP to check the
  feature.

C?
TP
CQ,uwh
T?
DPthey
Twill uclause-type
vP
ltDPgt
v?
VP
v
ltVgt
DPwhatwh
Vbake
v
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What will they bake?
CP

• What moves to SpecCP and checks the uwh
  feature of C.
• T moves toC to checkthe (nowstrong)
  uclausetypeQ feature.
• (Not pictured here)

C?
DPwhatwh
TP
CQ,uwh
T?
DPthey
Twill uclause-type
vP
ltDPgt
v?
VP
v
ltDPgt
ltVgt
Vbake
v
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Interrogative Q vs. Declarative Q

• Looking at wh-questions as compared to yes-no
  questions, it looks as if there are two kinds of
  interrogative C
• yes-no C C, clause-typeQ
• wh-question C C, clause-typeQ, uwh
• This is in fact often supposed in the syntax
  literature and many languages seem to have a
  special particle reserved for yes-no questions
  (e.g., English if, Mandarin ma)
• Adger notes a problem, howeverNothing in our
  system so far prevents us from using a yes-no C
  with a wh-word, predicting
• Will they bake what?

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Op

• Accordingly, Adger proposes that theres a
  wh-word even in yes-no questions.
• There are actually other reasons to think this as
  well, but well get to them later.
• That is Will they bake cookies? is actually
  something pretty close toWhether will they
  bake cookies?except with a silent whether,
  called Op.

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Will they bake pie?
CP

• Op appears in yes-no questions in the same place
  that wh-words do in wh-questions (and we assume
  it has a wh feature as well).
• Op is probably like a silent whether
  (wheither).

C?
DPOpwh
TP
CQ,uwh
T?
DPthey
Twill uclause-type
vP
ltDPgt
v?
VP
v
ltVgt
Vbake
DPpie
v
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Homework 9 additions

• Draw a structure for
• The students are likely to know what they will
  bake.
• What has Pat been sending to Chris?

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?

• ? ?
• ?
• ? ?
• ? ?
• ?
• ?