Download Week 2b

CAS LX 522
Syntax I
Week 2b. Categories and features
Where we were…
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Lexical categories:
N: noun
 V: verb
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A: adjective
P: preposition
Adv: adverb
Functional categories:
I: inflection/aux/modal
 C: complementizer
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D: determiner
PRN: Pronoun
Not all nouns are the same
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We’re trying to describe syntactic behavior
of words, and we tried to put words into
categories based on differences and
similarities in behavior (distribution).
But we already know that there are
differences even between members of the
same category, for example count vs.
mass nouns.
Count and Mass
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We could just say, fine, we have two
categories: Count, and Mass.
 [Mass
furniture], [Mass freedom]
 [Count chair], [Count pinnacle]
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But then we miss the fact, essentially, that
they’re all nouns. E.g., what do adjectives
modify?
Comfortable furniture makes me happy.
 Comfortable chairs make me happy.
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Commonalities and
differences
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Basically, mass nouns have something in
common with count nouns (namely, they’re
nouns), while also having differences
(count nouns are countable, mass nouns
are not).
Nouns have the property of being a noun.
 Count nouns have the property of being
countable, mass nouns do not.
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Features
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A “feature” is a fancy name for “property”, and is
used to express these similarities and
differences. Features are generally binary [+F]
or [-F].
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Count nouns have the feature [+count].
Mass nouns have the feature [-count].
Both have the feature [+N].
So things that are true of nouns we can say are
true of words with the feature [+N]. Things that
are true of count nouns are true of things that
are [+N, +count].
Proper and common nouns
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We can similarly distinguish proper nouns
(names) from common nouns (types).
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Boston, Chomsky, September
park, linguist, month
Proper nouns don’t occur with determiners (or if
they do, they are interpreted as if they were
common nouns: I met every Chomsky at the
picnic, I go to classes every September, the
Boston I remember was cleaner than this.
[±Common]
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So, Boston is a [+N, -Common] and park
is a [+N, +Common]. But they are both
[+N].
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These “secondary” features define
subclasses of categories, and are
sometimes referred to as subcategorial
features.
Feature matrices
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We can in fact encode many of the grammatical
properties words can have as features, which
will be useful in formulating our theory. The
features will be anything that our grammatical
rules/generalizations can “refer to”.
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The dog [+N, +Count, -Plural] is hot.
The dogs [+N, +Count, +Plural] are hot.
The soup [+N, -Count, -Plural] is hot.
The scissors [+N, -Count, +Plural] are hot.
Feature matrices
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The dog [+N, +Count, -Plural] is hot.
The dogs [+N, +Count, +Plural] are hot.
The soup [+N, -Count, -Plural] is hot.
The scissors [+N, -Count, +Plural] are hot.
The auxiliary be shows plural agreement: it is
are when the subject is [+Plural] and is when the
subject is [-Plural]. It doesn’t refer to (care about)
[±Count].
Adjectives and adverbs
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Adjectives and adverbs are a lot alike. Most
adjectives have an adverb form, and can in
nonstandard speech in fact be used as adverbs.
They both can be modified by very.
Suggests that maybe this is more like the
difference between mass and count nouns than
like the difference between nouns and verbs—
perhaps [±ADV] is a subcategorial feature.
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quick: [+A, -ADV]
quickly: [+A, +ADV]
Verbal features
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Like for nouns, we can think of the different forms
that verbs take as being differentiated by features:
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(Note: I’m diverging a bit from Radford here, but I’m right.)
He has shown improvement [+V, +Participle, -Past, +Perfect]
He had shown improvement [+V, +Participle, +Past, +Perfect]
He is showing improvement [+V, +Participle, -Past, -Perfect]
He showed improvement [+V, -Participle, +Past]
He shows improvement [+V, -Participle, -Past, +3sg]
You show improvement [+V, -Participle, -Past, -3sg]
So, -s is usually [-Participle, -Past, +3sg], -en is
[+Participle, +Perfect], -ed is [+Past], -ing is
[+Participle, -Perfect].
Crosscategorial features
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Consider what un can attach to.
untie, unfold, unwrap, unpack
 unhappy, unfriendly, undead
 *uncity, *uncola, *unconvention
 *unupon, *unalongside, *unat
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Basically, it applies to reversible verbs and
adjectives, but not to nouns or
prepositions. How can we state that?
Crosscategorial features
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Suppose that nouns and verbs are the most
basic categories. A noun is a noun and not a
verb, and verb is a verb and not a noun.
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Noun: [+N, -V].
Verb: [-N, +V].
A conceptual reason to separate nouns and
verbs is that verbs are basically predicates—
they attribute some property to the noun. Nouns
are basically arguments, to be assigned
properties by verbs.
Crosscategorial features
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Looked at this way, adjectives are kind of
“verby” in that they are also attributing
properties.
It’s hard to make that really precise, but
we have a more concrete syntactic
similarity between verbs and adjectives
too: both can take un-, while nouns and
prepositions cannot.
Supercategories
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Chomsky (1970) proposed that we explain
this by supposing that [±N] and [±V] are
the two basic features that determine the
four lexical categories (N, V, A, P).
N: [+N, -V]
 P: [-N, -V]
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V: [-N, +V]
A: [+N, +V]
Given that, what does un attach to?
Russian Case
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Other languages can give us evidence of this as
well. For example, Russian nouns (all nouns)
are marked for Case (like English pronouns are:
me vs. I), but when they are modified by an
adjective, the adjective is also marked for case.
What gets marked for Case in Russian?
Krasivaya dyevushka vsunula
chornuyu
koshku v
pustuyu korobku
beautiful
black
cat
empty
girl
put
‘The beautiful girl put the black cat in the empty box’
in
box
Functional and lexical
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That takes care of N, V, A, P, but what about our
functional categories?
In fact, the functional categories (C, I, D, PRN)
each seem a little like a lexical category.
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Auxiliaries seem a lot like verbs (have, be, do), and
inflect like verbs do.
Complementizers and infinitival to seem a bit like
prepositions (e.g., for, to).
Pronouns are kind of nouny.
Determiners are a bit adjectivey.
[+F]?
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Perhaps we can add a third binary feature,
[±F] to capture this:
[-F]
[+N]
[-N]
[+F]
[+N]
[-N]
[+V]
A
V
[+V]
D
Aux
[-V]
N
P
[-V]
PRN
C, I
Grammatical category
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So what, then is a grammatical category?
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A grammatical category is a set of elements
which have the same value(s) for a given set of
grammatical features.
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Category labels like “N”, or “Aux” are really just
shorthand for feature matrices like [+N, -V, -F],
or [-N, +V, +F]. Notationally convenient.
The morphology of be
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Consider the following. How can we write an
efficient set of rules to give us the correct form of
be?
[-Past]
[+Past]
[-Pl]
[+Pl]
[-Pl]
[+Pl]
[+1]
1
am
are
was
were
[-1, +2]
2
are
are
were
were
[-1, -2]
3
is
are
was
were
The morphology of be
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Ok, let’s test it out.
I [+1, -2, -Pl, -Past, -N, +V, +F] ecstatic.
They [-1, -2, +Pl, +Past, -N, +V, +F] leaving.
Y’all [-1, +2, +Pl, +Past, -N, +V, +F] late.
In general, we might suppose that’s all there is
to auxiliary be: a bundle of properties (auxiliary
be: -N, +V, +F; subject agreement: ±1, ±2, ±Pl;
tense: ±Past) and some rules to pronounce the
bundles.
Separating the underlying
from the pronounced
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This is a worthwhile point to remember. There is
an underlying feature bundle, the auxiliary is an
auxiliary be, with a tense, and some agreement
features. We know the rules about pronouncing
those features. Sometimes two feature bundles
end up being pronounced in the same way.
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In a real sense, the are in You are happy and
the are in We are happy are different words, that
just happen to be pronounced the same way.
But they could have been pronounced distinctly.
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