LING 720: Syntax
Wednesday, September 10, 2014 Class Notes
By Jamie Wurdinger & Victoria Sharpe
Sam and Dubinsky go over Tallerman chapter 2 homework.
Problem 1, pg. 67:
1. Next week is describing noun as a quantifier.
2. P&S is 2 coordinated noun phrases
3. “she” is a subject
4. “Yesterday’s news” is a possessive noun phrase.
5. “there” is pleonastic, but “the problems” and “this government” were
the subjects. “Given the problems….” is a subordinate clause. “Hope” acts
a noun but takes a clausal complement as if it were a verb “government
will survive”. “There” (unlike “it” which always triggers singular
agreement) does not control the number agreement of the verb; instead
“hope” the object is controlling it.
There is a stray dog in the backyard --- the dog is dictating the #feature for
“is”. Dog is the semantic subject. “There” is a non-referential placeholder.
“There” is not to be confused with “here” in this case.
6. This sentence was a movement test.
7. Prepositional phrase that refers to a train route, which is a noun. It’s
interesting that it is not in a noun phrase or verb phrase, but is the subject.
8. Noun phrase.
9. Noun phrase.
10. noun phrase.
11. Kim was the subject. “Where” looks like a relative clause but it
doesn’t function well as one, “I know the location where Kim’s going on
holiday” is ungrammatical. “I know the reason that Kim’s going on
holiday” is okay, but you can’t say “I know the reason why Kim’s going
on holiday.” “The book that he bought” not “The book what he bought”.
“Where Kim’s going on holiday” is like a question or a complement
clause. Verb phrases can be subjects, “to err is human”.
12. “You” was the subject.
PP can be a subject, e.g., #7. Adjectival phrases can also be the subject,
“Very tall is how she likes her body guards.” Demonstrative determiners
and determiner phrases can be subjects, “That is a big rock.”
You find out all kinds of secrets of a language by looking very carefully at
different regional and ethnic varieties, because people do creative stuff
with language when they can get away with it.
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Grammatical categories that can act as subjects include verbs (e.g. To err is
human), adjectives (Jealous is what you are), prepositional phrases (From here is
twenty miles), and clauses (That she loved dogs was well known).
Pleonastic Subjects
o For example There are stray dogs in the yard.
o In this example, “There” is the syntactic subject, but it is a non-referring
(pleonastic) subject.
o Semantically, the subject is “stray dogs.”
o Some non-standard dialects that pronounce “There is” like “They’s” when
it serves as a pleonastic subject, but not otherwise.
 Thus, “They’s a storm coming” but NOT “They’s your wallet.”
Subject Properties
o Location in sentence (typically before verb)
o Triggers agreement with verb
o These properties are separable, as shown by the above pleonastic
example, which has the property of location but does not trigger verb
agreement (the semantic subject, “stray dogs” triggers agreement,
resulting in “are”)
Remember, also, that each clause has a subject and predicate.
Problem #5, p. 70
In the first set of data the postposition “no” is an attribute possession; however, it
is not inflectional. In the second set is an adjectival postposition, but it is not
derivational. When trying to decipher the function of an affix, try not to translate
it literally into English because that can be misleading; instead study how the
affixes function in the sentence.
Dubinsky discussed how if we translated 5-8 into English using the preposition,
“of”, this preposition would not function as an indicator of possession, but as
something defining the object taking the action of the verb (e.g., teacher of math).
This is how translating directly into English can be misleading.
In 5-7, if you look at the semantic sense of the nouns, “teacher”, “cause” and
“plan”, and if you take the verbal analog of them, all of the things with “no” could
be either possessive or adjectival. Conceptually these bits are perhaps arguments
of the lexemes in question.
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First set is fairly straightforward: shows possession
Second set is more complex
o examples 5, 6, 7: if you take the verb analog of the non-suffixed word, the
suffixed noun could be its object.
o Thus, we can see the suffixed word as serving as a complement of the
non-suffixed word and the suffix denoting its role as a complement
When doing problems like this, remember to not get too caught up in meaning,
but to take the data on its own merits and look at the structure of the data
Word order matters:
1. “English Spanish teacher” (A British teacher who teachers Spanish)– The one closer to
the noun functions as the object of the verb.
2. “Spanish English teacher” (A Hispanic teacher who teaches English)
Complements: If “teach” and “teacher” are semantically related, and teach is semantically
transitive, then teacher is also semantically transitive. “Teacher” needs an object that is
semantically understood. (E.g., teach math.) “Read” and “eat” also need objects that are
semantically understood.
Complement has to do with the position it’s in and how it’s constructed. Complements
complete the argument structures of the verb. Complementation is when a part of speech
gets an argument that it needs in order to complete its structure. Can you imagine a
victory without a competition, a winner, or a loser? Lexical items also have conceptual
structures built around them. Think of a verb or any lexical element as being in a little
play or seen in a play. Open the curtain and the verb is “teach”. The play must have a
teacher and student, or the scene doesn’t work.
Dubinsky discussed how words with almost identical meanings can have differ with
complementation requirements. “Pass” and “throw” are nearly identical verbs. The
complement abilities of the words are the same; they can both take noun phrase objects
and PP objects: “He passed the ball”, “He threw the ball”, “He passed/threw to Jim”, and
“He passed/threw the ball to Jim”. The 2 words are almost semantically identical when
there is a dative; however, “threw” is intransitive and “pass” is transitive. If the QB
throws the ball but doesn’t pass it, it results in a penalty. “Pass” requires a dative
(recipient of the action); throw does not.
Other examples of transitive and intransitive verbs:
“He behaved (well).” Only 1 subject, no object. Intransitive
“I shaved (myself/you)” is transitive.
“Perjury” is transitive even though semantically it only has one subject. You don’t
say, “I perjured”.
Adjuncts are typically modifiers. Modifiers don’t affect/complete/enlarge any structures.
E.g., Transitive verbs + object = raises it from verb to verb phrase. Modifiers do not turn
a word into a word phrase. Noun phrases remain noun phrases and verb phrases remain
verb phrases, etc. Verb phrase modification: “Walk” is a set of “walking”. Many types of
actions count as walking, but there are physiological constraints that change it to running,
skipping, etc. “Walking fast” is a subset of walking. It’s still a verb phrase.
For transitive verbs, once you give it an object, then it becomes a class of activities.
Matrix Clause is a clause that contains another clause. The outer clause is the matrix, the
clause inside is the Subordinate Clause.
Root clause is the clause at the top of the syntactic tree. It can stand alone. A subordinate
often cannot stand alone as a root clause.
Terminology
- Complement versus Adjunct
o Complements are obligatory (but can be omitted if they have been
previously mentioned and are understood); adjuncts are optional
o Adjuncts do not elaborate or add to the structure of the phrase it modifies
 In other words, modification (adding an adjunct) takes a set (e.g.
dogs) and returns a subset of that set (e.g. brown dogs).
o Complement do add to the structure
 e.g. “She eats”  “She eats pizza”
- Semantic versus Syntactic Transitivity
o Semantic and Syntactic Transitivity do not necessarily coincide
 For example, “to eat” may or may not take a syntactic object, but
semantically, one must always be eating something in order to be
eating. Thus, “to eat” is optionally transitive syntactically but
obligatorily transitive semantically.
 The semantic roles associated with a word are referred to as its
lexical-conceptual structure.
 E.g., there can be no victory without a competition, a
winner, and a loser.
Homework assignment:
1. Exercise 5 on p. 105. Mark verbs. Only even numbers, 2,4,6,8. Do all parts.
2. Exercise 1 on p. 135, 1-5. Identify noun phrases, NP in other phrases, etc. Give
him the list of NP, each on a line. Don’t have to boldface them.
3. Exercise 3 on p. 135. Do everything. Decide what is the head, dependent, and
their relationship.