Senarslan
10/27/14
Larson- Chp. 17 & 18- Chapter Summary and Questions
Here in these two chapters, Larson put the distinguish factors of complements and adjuncts to a test:
He outlines three tests:
• Optionality
• Iterability
• Lexical sensitivity
He proposes two principles to determine what could be considered as constituents:
P1-If a string of words can be conjoined, then it is a constituent.
P2-If a string of words can be replaced by a proform, then it is a constituent.
Then he goes on explaining why some verbs selects complement and some do not, as in put
Verbs that selects a complement -chase
Verbs that selects no complement- crawl
Prepositions that selects a complement – in
Prepositions that selects no complement – in
The verb and its complements must occur together in their own constituent, VP.
All complements of put must occur in a constituent with put .
Then he proposes a general principle for ‘Locality Constraints’- An item X and its complements must
occur together in a phrase headed by X.
Lexical Insertion Rules:
Feature Interpretation
[+ __ ] “Insert me into a frame where nothing follows.”
[+ __ NP] “Insert me into a frame where a single NP follows.”
[+ __ NP NP] “Insert me into a frame where two NPs follow.”
[+ __ NP PP] “Insert me into a frame where an NP and a PP follow.”
Feature Interpretation
[+ __ ] “Insert me into a phrase that I head where nothing follows.”
[+ __ NP] “Insert me into a phrase that I head where one NP follows.”
[+ __ NP NP] “Insert me into a phrase that I head where two NPs follow.”
[+ __ NP PP] “Insert me into a phrase that I head where an NP and a PP follow.”
Subcategorization Frames as Features
consider the verb put and its lexical entry
put, V, <agent, theme, location>, [+ __ NP PP ]
[+loc]
Attaching adjuncts: Verbal Adjuncts as Inside VP or Outside VP?
Homer polished the car in the garage and oiled the lawn mower.
polished the car in the garage has been conjoined with a phrase whose category is clearly VP (oiled
the lawn mower). Using the conjunction principle from Unit 9, we thus have evidence that polished
the car in the garage is also of category VP
PP attached in the same place as with put: namely, under the VP with the object
Conjunction test
If a phrase whose category we are unsure about (X) can be conjoined with
another phrase (Y) whose category we know, then we can generally conclude
that X belongs to the same category as Y.
Substitution test
If a phrase whose category we are unsure about (X) can, without change
of function, replace another phrase (Y) whose category we know, then
we can conclude that X belongs to the same category as Y.
Complements: Sister of V – Modifiers: Sister of VP
Overall we have the following rules that could be derived from Part V:
-The Complement must precede an adjunct.
-Adjunct rules are recursive.
-A complement rules are not recursive. It can only apply once.
-Unlike Complements, which have to precede Adjuncts, Adjuncts can be freely reordered with respect
to each other.
-Compliments can be co-ordinated with other Adjuncts.
-Adjuncts can be co-ordinated with other Adjuncts.
-But Adjunct PPs and Complement PPs can not be co-ordinated.
-Adjuncts are less tightly bound to the head noun than Complements.
-Complements and Adjuncts behave differently with respect to preposing.
-Heads are more closely related to their Complements than to their Adjuncts.
Questions:
1-Why the Heads place significant restrictions on what can appear as their complement (as in
subcategorization)?
2-Why there are not similar restrictions are imposed on Adjuncts?