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CAS LX 522
Syntax I
Week 1b. Morphosyntactic
features
ch. 2.1-2.4.1
The atoms of the system
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Syntax tells us which
arrangements of words
make good sentences.
But yet the words
themselves don’t seem to
matter, they aren’t the
basic elements of the
system.
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Rather, it is the set of
properties each word has
that seem to be basic.
Verb or not a verb, plural
or not plural…
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*enthusiastic are students
the
the students are enthusiastic
*the student are enthusiastic
the student is enthusiastic
the students are enthusiastic
*the students is enthusiastic
this coffee is/*are hot.
these muffins are/*is tasty.
Properties… features…
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Words have properties.
There is an abstract concept of plural, that is
morphologically realized in several different ways.
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A deer ate my bagel. Deer are funny.
A dog ate my bagel. Dogs are funny.
A goose ate my bagel. Geese are funny.
Same “agreement” requirement, regardless of the
actual morphological shape.
The abstract property of “plural” (or “singular”)
seems to be what the grammar is sensitive to.
(Morphosyntactic) features.
Agreement
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In English, the subject and the verb of a
sentence need to agree in number and (for be)
person.
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The dog wants food. The dogs want food.
The dog is hungry. The dogs are hungry.
I am hungry. We are hungry.
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If the subject is plural (has a plural feature) then
the verb must take on a “plural” form.
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Crosslinguistically common to have this kind of
agreement relation between subject and verb.
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The plural feature is interpretable on the subject,
contributes to the meaning. On the verb, the
(agreeing) plural feature is uninterpretable—more on
Data from other languages
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Il
a
dit qu’ elle était malade
he[3.sg] have[3.sg] said that she was ill
‘He said that she was ill.’
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Ils
ont
dit qu’ elle était malade
they[3.pl] have[3.pl] said that she was ill
‘They said that she was ill.’
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Standard 3-line format for examples from other
languages (example, gloss, translation).
Why does it matter what other languages do?
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What are the features?
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Some features matter for syntax, some don’t.
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No language says that subject and verb must agree in
the feature [invented in early September], although there
are things that have this property.
For the purpose of describing the grammar and
explaining syntactic principles, we don’t care about
[invented in early September].
We have evidence, however, that [plural] matters
to syntax.
We’re looking for the minimal (least complicated)
set of features that suffices to explain the grammar.
[plural]
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We know number matters. In English, things can be
singular or plural. So, a first guess is that nouns
have either a [singular] feature or a [plural] feature.
Hypothesis:
[sg] and [pl] are features a word can have.
Prediction:
Four classes of words: [sg], [pl], [sg.pl], [].
But we really only have two classes in English.
This hypothesis overgenerates—it predicts the
existence of the actual distinctions, but it also
predicts other distinctions that don’t exist.
[plural]
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We observed the data (nouns can be
singular or plural in English), we stated a
hypothesis, which made predictions. We
check the predictions… and it doesn’t
seem right. The scientific method.
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There is a simpler story we can tell, one
that predicts exactly two classes.
[plural] for plurals, [] for singulars.
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Overgeneration /
undergeneration
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Already we have the basic structure of our
theory and a means of analysis evaluation.
Two independent features [pl] and [sg] predict
four combinations, overgenerates.
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All attested combinations are predicted.
Some predicted combinations are not attested.
An analysis that says “All words are singular”
undergenerates.
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All predicted combinations are attested.
Some attested combinations are not predicted.
What kind of thing is a feature?
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Although features are “properties,” there are
several views that have been taken on features.
If we view a feature like [plural] as being either
there or not, it is a privative feature.
We might also view a feature like [plural] as having
one of two values: [+plural] for plurals, [-plural] for
singulars. This is a binary valued feature.
We don’t know from the outset which view is the
best for describing syntax, we want to choose the
one that captures the generalizations we see.
Duals
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For English, either a privative [plural] feature
or a binary-valued [±plural] feature would
work. In English there are two classes for
number, singular and plural.
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Some languages also have a dual, a number
reserved for pairs. Classical Arabic, for
example, and Hopi.
Hopi morphology
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Pam taaqa wari
that man ran[sg]
‘That man ran.’
Puma ta?taq-t yu?ti
those man[pl] ran[pl]
‘Those men ran.’
Puma ta?taq-t wari
those man[pl] ran[sg]
‘Those two men ran.’
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In Hopi, the dual is
expressed by
combining singular
and plural.
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If we analyzed dual
as [+pl, +sg] (or as
[pl, sg]), we have a
kind of explanation for
that.
The fourth number?
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Three numbers are
attested in the world’s
languages: singular,
plural, and dual.
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We can handle this by
going back to the view
that [sg] and [pl] are
independent.
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Singular: [sg]
Plural:
[pl]
Dual:
[sg, pl]
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The fourth possibility should be
neither. But there doesn’t seem
to be a fourth number.
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Hypothesis: General constraint
on grammars: Nouns must
have some number feature,
[sg] is the default, added in if
there is no number feature
already.
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(We’ll return to this)
Words and language
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Let’s take a moment to lay out the general
structure of this theory.
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Knowing a language is
knowing the “words”
 knowing how to put them together
 knowing how to pronounce them
 knowing what they mean in combination.
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The lexicon
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To construct a sentence, we start with the
“words” and put them together.
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We can describe the knowledge of the
words of a language as being a list, a
mental lexicon.
this is
essentially
the picture
on p. 146
of the
textbook
Interfaces
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Lexicon
We can view a “word” as a bundle of
features, as defined by its properties.
The grammar assembles words into
sentences. The sentence is interpreted
and pronounced.
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Grammar
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A-P
system
C-I
system
The assembly process is the grammar
proper.
The system that interprets sentences is
another cognitive module concerned with
meaning, reasoning, etc. It interprets the
constructed sentence at the interface.
The system that determines the
pronunciation of sentences is yet another
cognitive module, interpreting the
constructed sentence at its interface.
Tension
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For English, it seems that
independent [sg] and [pl]
features is more
complicated than we
need, it seems to
overgenerate.
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Since we’re striving to explain
the grammatical system
underlying all languages, we
need a hypothesis about what is
different in languages with no
dual (e.g., English).
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In the broader picture,
Language needs to allow
for independent [sg] and
[pl] features in order to
accommodate duals in,
e.g., Hopi.
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One possibility: The feature [sg]
is not recorded in the English
lexicon. Book [], books [pl].
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All languages have singulars, but in
languages without duals, singular is
the default, the “number for nouns
not specified for number.”
So languages can differ in whether
they record [sg] in the lexicon.
What are the features?
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Hard to say. A universal set, some used in
some languages, but not others?
Learned?
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Some features seem not to exist, why?
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Ockham’s razor again—we want to define
the simplest set of features we can to
explain the data.
Category
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The study of syntax is concerned with distribution.
Words seem to come in distributional classes.
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For example, one class of words can appear after the
possessive pronoun my (my book, *my at, *my quickly,
*my explode, *my purple). The nouns. One class of words
is compatible with past tense. The verbs. One class of
words is compatible with comparative (happier). The
adjectives.
Words can be separated into classes: noun, verb,
adjective, preposition, etc.
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Classes also vary with respect to the kind of
morphological endings they can have, and so forth.
(Arrival, replacement, destruction; widen, computerize)
Distribution examples
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They have no noun.
They can verb.
They are adjective.
Very adverb, very adjective.
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so long as it makes sense (e.g., with gradable
adjectives; #they are very absent)
Right preposition
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right over the house
Nouns and verbs
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Nouns have a category feature [N].
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Verbs have a category feature [V].
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Books [N, pl].
Complained [V]
Two independent features, four predicted
categories:
[N, V]
 []
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(adjectives)
(prepositions)
Binary vs. privative
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There’s something unsettling about saying the
prepositions simply lack category features (neither
nominal nor verbal).
We can soothe ourselves somewhat by adopted
binary category features instead of privative features:
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[+N, -V]
[+N, +V]
[-N, -V]
[-N, +V]
noun
adjective
preposition
verb
Same predictions, but more in line with our intuition
about what “category” should be.
[±N, ±V]
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The [±N, ±V] category system may seem a bit “out of
the blue.” But it does yield some descriptive benefit.
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Consider what un- can attach to:
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untie, unfold, unwrap, unpack
unhappy, unfriendly, undead
*uncity, *uncola, *unconvention
*unupon, *unalongside, *unat
Basically, it applies to reversible verbs and
adjectives, but not to nouns or prepositions.
How can we state that in terms of our category
features?
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