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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 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. Some have only a subject, they can’t have an object—the intransitive verbs (1-place predicates). Sleep: Bill slept; *Bill slept the book. Some also need an object—the transitive verbs (2place predicates). 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. Different arguments have different roles in the event. (e.g., The hitter, the hittee) Thematic relations 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 Agent: initiator or doer in the event Theme: affected by the event, or undergoes the action Experiencer: feel or perceive the event Bill kicked the ball. Bill likes pizza. Proposition: a statement, can be true/false. Bill said that he likes pizza. Thematic relations Goal: Source: Bill ate the burrito with a plastic spork. Benefactive: Bill took a pencil from the pile. Instrument: 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, … q-roles 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 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: Unergatives: Agent assigned to argument. Unaccusatives: Theme assigned to argument. 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 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. (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 Verbs are recorded in the lexicon with the q-roles they assign as part of their meaning. But, verbs are more selective than that. 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. 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] 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: 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: 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] 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, …]