LNGT 0250: Morphology and Syntax
Spring 2015
Assignment #5: Due on Friday April 17, by e-mail only no later than 2pm. Late submissions
will not be accepted. Make sure you re-name the file ‘assignment5_your_last_name’.
In this assignment, you will be working with the Workbook to enhance your understanding of the
fundamental concepts of structural relations as well as those of X-bar Theory. In addition, you
will be introduced to Binding Theory by reading Chapter 5 of the Textbook on your own and
enhancing your understanding of the theory via doing three problem sets from the Textbook.
There are three parts to this assignment. Notice that this assignment is worth 30 points.
Part I (5 points)
Do the exercises in Chapter 4 of the Workbook, focusing mainly on the exercises that help you
fully understand dominance, exhaustive dominance, immediate dominance, and crucially ccommand. Ignore exercise 8 on government. You do not need to submit answers to these
exercises to me; rather, simply write a paragraph of at least 150 words on any challenges you
faced with the exercises, and on whether the Workbook answers helped you sort these challenges
out. If any concepts are still unclear even after doing the exercises and reading the solutions,
state which ones.
Part II (10 points)
We introduced X-bar Theory last week, which is both conceptually and empirically superior to
our earlier phrase structure grammar theory. To make sure you understand how phrase structure
is built under X-bar Theory, do the exercises in Chapter 6 of the Workbook. Again, you do not
need to submit answers to these exercises to me; rather, simply write a short report of at least
250 words, on any challenges you faced with the exercises, and on whether the Workbook
answers helped you sort them out. If some issues are still unclear, state which ones.
Part III (15 points)
Read chapter 5 from the Textbook (it’s short; only 10 pages). To make sure you fully understand
the chapter, you may want to do the Workbook’s Chapter 5 exercises and compare your answers
to the author’s answers, but you are not required to write a report on that. Instead, you’ll be
working on problem sets from the Textbook. Specifically, answer the following three problem
sets from the Textbook (Note: the answers should be really short and straightforward here; do
not give lengthy answers).

Answer GPS4: Binding Principles (pp. 158-159). Make sure to pay attention to the subscripts
on NPs since they indicate the intended coreference relationship under which each sentence
is ungrammatical. Ignore the interpretations under which a sentence is grammatical; these are
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totally irrelevant to the exercise. Also, remember that there are three Binding Principles.
Make sure you figure out which principle is relevant to which sentence in the problem set;
the explanation of the ungrammaticality of each sentence in the problem set is to be
explained by making reference to only one principle of the three.
To help guide you on what the expected answer should look like, I provide an example
below.
(10 points)
Here is a suggested answer to sentence (a) in GPS4:
The sentence ‘Michaeli loves himi’ is ungrammatical, because the NP [him] is c-commanded and
bound within its binding domain (the entire clause), which is a violation of Binding Condition B.

Answer Challenge Problem Set 1: Wh-questions (p. 159)
(2.5 points)

Answer Challenge Problem Set 2: Binding domain (p. 159)
(2.5 points)
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