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CAS LX 522
Syntax I
Week 3a. q-roles, feature
checking
3.5-3.6
Previously, in LX522…
B
C
D

We left off last time exploring
the idea that sentence are built
from syntactic objects by using
the operation Merge, taking
two syntactic objects and
forming a new one from them.

One of the two objects is the
head of the new object—the
most important component—
and the features of the new
object are inherited
(projected) from the head.

The question now is: how does
Merge know which one is the
head?
E
Who’s in charge here?
B
C
D

The idea we are going to
pursue here is that one of
the two objects needs
Merge to happen—and the
needy one is the head.

What does it mean to
“need to Merge”?

Consider hit. This can’t
really stand on its own. It
doesn’t mean anything (its
truth can’t be evaluated)
without providing a hitter
and a hittee.
E
Predicates, arguments, and
propositions
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Conventional wisdom has it that a sentence
needs a subject and a predicate.
The idea is that the sentence expresses that the
property signified by the predicate holds of the
subject.
Pat danced.
Danced is the predicate, it’s a property that Pat,
the subject, has (if the sentence is true).
Something that can be true or false, a “complete
thought”, is a proposition.
Verbs and arguments

Some are basically complete as they stand.

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Some have only a subject, they can’t have an
object—the intransitive verbs (1-place predicates).
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Sleep: Bill slept; *Bill slept the book.
Some also need an object—the transitive verbs (2place predicates).
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
Rain: It rained.
Hit: *Bill hit; Bill hit the pillow.
Some need two objects—ditransitive verbs (3place predicates).

Put: *Bill put; *Bill put the book;
Bill put the book on the table.
Verbs and arguments

The “participants” in an event denoted by the
verb are the arguments of that verb.

Some verbs require one argument, some require
two arguments, some require three arguments,
some require none.

Intuitively, the number of arguments is the
number of things that a verb needs in order to
make a proposition—something that can be
either true or false.
Predicates

We will consider verbs to be predicates
which define properties of and/or relations
between the arguments.
Bill hit the ball
 There was a hitting, Bill did the hitting, the ball
was affected by the hitting.

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Different arguments have different roles in
the event. (e.g., The hitter, the hittee)
Thematic relations

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It has come to be standard practice to
think of the selectional restrictions in terms
of the thematic relation that the argument
has to the verb—the role it plays in the
event.
One thematic relation is agent of an
action, like Bill in:

Bill kicked the ball.
Common thematic relations

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Agent: initiator or doer in the event
Theme: affected by the event, or
undergoes the action

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Experiencer: feel or perceive the event

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Bill kicked the ball.
Bill likes pizza.
Proposition: a statement, can be
true/false.

Bill said that he likes pizza.
Thematic relations

Goal:
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Source:
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Bill ate the burrito with a plastic spork.
Benefactive:
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Bill took a pencil from the pile.
Instrument:

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Bill ran to Copley Square.
Bill gave the book to Mary. (Recipient)
Bill cooked dinner for Mary.
Location:

Bill sits under the tree on Wednesdays.
Thematic relations

Armed with these terms, we can describe
the semantic connection between the verb
and its arguments.

Ray gave a grape to Bill.
Ray: Agent, Source, …
 A grape: Theme
 Bill: Goal, Recipient, …
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q-roles
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An argument can participate in several thematic
relations with the verb (e.g., Agent, Goal).
In the syntax, we assign a special connection to
the verb called a “q-role”, which is a collection of
thematic relations.
For the purposes of syntax, the q-role (the
collection of relations) is much more central than
the actual relations in the collection.
q-role
Agent
Source
q-roles
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We will often need to make reference to a
particular q-role, and we will often do this
by referring to the most prominent relation
in the collection.
For example, in Bill hit the ball, we say that
Bill has the “Agent q-role”, meaning it has
a q-role containing the Agent relation,
perhaps among others.
Intransitives:
Unergatives and
unaccusatives
 For intransitive verbs (1-place predicates), there
are two primary classes:
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Unergatives: Agent assigned to argument.
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Unaccusatives: Theme assigned to argument.
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Pat danced. Pat yodelled.
Pat tripped. The boat sank.
Basically what you’d expect considering the
normal transitive (2-place) verbs that have an
Agent and a Theme.
The naming of these classes is not my fault.
The Unique q Generalization
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Although an argument can have any number of
thematic relations in the q-role…
Each q-role must be assigned to a constituent, but a
constituent cannot be assigned more than one qrole.

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(a.k.a. “the q-criterion”)
On the other side, verbs (as we’ve seen) are
recorded in the lexicon with the number of
participants they require; each participant must
have a q-role as well.
Verbs have a certain number of q-roles to assign
(e.g., say has two), and each of those must be
assigned to a distinct argument.
C-selection

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Verbs are recorded in the lexicon with the q-roles
they assign as part of their meaning.
But, verbs are more selective than that.

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Pat felt a tremor. Pat felt uncomfortable. Pat felt that Chris
had not performed well.
Pat is the Experiencer; a tremor (noun),
uncomfortable (adjective), or that…well (sentence)
is the Theme/Source. So q-role does not determine
syntactic category. And syntactic category certainly
does not determine q-role.
So verbs also need to be recorded with information
about the syntactic categor(y/ies) they combine
with.
C-selection
(“Subcategorization”)

Kick needs a nominal object.

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Pat kicked the pail.
Kick has a [V] category feature, but also needs
to have some form of [N] category feature
indicating that it needs a nominal object.
We don’t want to risk interpreting kick as a noun,
though. So, the [V] and [N] features must have a
different status.
On kick, the [V] feature is interpretable— the
[N] feature is just for use in assembling the
structure, it is not interpreted—hence
uninterpretable.
C-selection

Not all transitive verbs (that take just one
object) can take the same kind of object.
Sue knows [DP the answer ]
 Sue knows [CP that Bill left early ]
 Sue hit [DP the ball ]
 *Sue hit [CP that Bill left early]

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So know can take either a DP or a CP as
its object argument; hit can only take a DP
as its object argument.
S-selection

Verbs also exert semantic control of the kinds of
arguments they allow.

For example, many verbs can only have a
volitional (agentive) subject:
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Bill likes pizza. Bill kicked the stone.
#Pizza likes anchovies. #The stone kicked Bill.
We’ll assume that this is not encoded in the
syntactic features, but if you mess up with respect
to s-selection, the interpretation is anomalous.
Feature checking

To model this, we will say that if a syntactic object
has an uninterpretable feature, it must Merge with
a syntactic object that has a matching feature—
and once it’s done, the requirement is met. The
feature is checked.

Specifically:
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Full Interpretation: The structure to which the semantic
interface rules apply contains no uninterpretable features.
Checking Requirement: Uninterpretable features must be
checked (and once checked, they are deleted)
Checking (under sisterhood): An uninterpretable feature F
on a syntactic object Y is checked when Y is sister to
another syntactic object Z which bears a matching feature F.
Feature checking

To distinguish interpretable
features from uninterpretable
features, we will write
uninterpretable features with a u
in front of them.

D has uninterpretable feature F
E has interpretable feature F.

D
[uF]
E
[F]

If we Merge them, the
uninterpretable feature can be
checked (under sisterhood).
Feature checking
C
D
[uF]

To distinguish interpretable
features from uninterpretable
features, we will write
uninterpretable features with a u
in front of them.

D has uninterpretable feature F
E has interpretable feature F.

E
[F]

If we Merge them, the
uninterpretable feature can be
checked (under sisterhood).
Feature checking
kick
me
[uN, V] [N, acc, 1, sg]

Or, for a more concrete example

kick is a verb (has an
interpretable V feature) and cselects a noun (has an
uninterpretable N feature).

me is a noun (a pronoun in fact,
has an interpretable N feature,
and others like accusative case,
first person, singular)
Feature checking
V

Or, for a more concrete example

kick is a verb (has an
interpretable V feature) and cselects a noun (has an
uninterpretable N feature).

me is a noun (a pronoun in fact,
has an interpretable N feature,
and others like accusative case,
first person, singular)

Merging them will check the
uninterpretable feature, and the
structure can be interpreted.
kick
me
[uN, V] [N, acc, 1, sg]
Feature checking

The head is the “needy” one.
The one that had the
uninterpretable feature that was
checked by Merge.

The combination has the
features of the verb kick and so
its distribution will be like a verb’s
distribution would be.

Pat wants to kick me.
Pat wants to drive.
I like to draw elephants.
*Pat wants to elephants.
*I like to draw kick me.
V
kick
me
[uN, V] [N, acc, 1, sg]

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walk to Boston
Boston [N, …]
walk[V, uP, …]
to
[P, uN, …]
Pat walks to Boston
Pat [N, …]
to [P, uN, …]
Boston
walks
[N, …]
[V, uP, uN, …]
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