Syntax II - Class VI

Johni isi considered ti intelligent - see diagram.

locality stuff.
chapter 3 in the black book.

more palatable arguments for minimalist program introduced later.

a bit of background why important to delve into the discussion.,
we advantage of knowing what Chomsky did with NP mobvement in Barriers.

added one crucual ingredient at end of last class. cant be whole sacrosant analysis of passives, becauses reason to beleive passives to not just lack external argument, ie. vaccuumed up entirely, unlike in case of middles (this book reads easily *deliberately), where see no agent in imddle. But can say "this book was torn to peices deliberately." And control seems to be syntactically constrained, at least by obligatory control. (and cannot easily intepret this as arbitrary control "the ship was sunk to collect the insurance money," does not seem that some arbitrary person will collect the insurance money,

then we need a controller for that PRO. and that would need to be an empty category of some sort. the collector of insurance money are the implicit agents of the sinking event. (could also have explicit byphrase - e.g. was sunk by the owner to collect the insurance money.) by passives always assume implicit agent. must be some empty category representing this implicit agent. (last week,called this Pro, since did not want to specifiy How to identify it - whether this was PRO or pro.) Where put it? Where ALWAYS put recipient -inside the VP. see diagram 2.
But problem because V' will be barrier unless use spec-head and head-head agreement, but then John was killed would always be John committing suicide.

also *relativized* minimality problem, because Pro is in an A position, and moving trace to Johni


Guasti - suggested straightforward wat- a theta role was assigned to this position (Pro), so could not have landed there anyway, so should not be a barrier.
Idea is always "make the shortest *possible* move, and let us take *possible* seriously.
so she further relativized relativized minimality, saying that an intervening theta-position, cannot land in.
is this true generally?

Now enter chapter 3 program of minimalist program.
we will see that it is NOT generally possible to get out of the difficulty by referring to thematic content of the positions.
note that has the desirable effect (once we have this in place) that we do not have to go down Guasti's line, and refer to the theta-criterion. and theta-criterion is simply baggage. don't need it for phonology, semantics, etc.. but rather we have stipulated it in order to get certain results.

Are situations when go from t to A across an A position, where intervening A is a theta-bar position, where it is OK.

First step to take is:
we are familiar w fact that subjects can agree with finite verbs for phi features . person and number (not gender). Hebrew has gender agreement with finite verbs. In other langs, perhaps phi features involved will be diff subset of those phi. That is agreement.

it turns out not just subject that can agree. also objects. need look beyond english, to Romance langs. in fairly narrow circumscribable

when object is clitic pronoun, when object is NP moved (in passive), and WH-moved.
in 50, gave example for French, in WH-movement - how many tables did you repaint?
and here, not just orthoggraphically represented but phonologically real.
es ending. Plural and Feminine.
thus get gender agreement. (the e- and is pronounced)
plural agreement is orthographically real. (but the s is not pronounced)
thus, in one of the phi features.
but how could it?
subject-verb agreement happens usually under spec-head agreement, but this not true buy object!
see diagram (3).
base generated in complement position of the Verb, and cannot move it to subject position, because that will be where subject is.
bery easy to move to spec position for functional position, but not for lexical position.
could create some functional position to move into. which position? could it be spec-IP?

cannot be that agreement happens in IP, because as-tu agreement. separated by tu, so not in same area as repeint.
So need two positions for agreement, one for subject-head agreement, and one for object agreement.

Infl realy has 2 things dangling under it. Tense and about agreement.
I - T
|
Agr

Thus really schizo creature. imagine dissolve this hybridity.
then would need to recognize independence of T and Agr.

Think of Infl as nation-state, with multiple ethnicities within. Dissolve, create two other nation-states.

No more IP, but TP and AgrP.
One recognize ArgP (Agreement Phrase).
Then there is AgrP for subjects, and AgrP for objects. AgrP never existed before for objects for Chomsky, because no object agreement for English.

Now, 3 things. TP, AgrP for subjects, AgrP for objects.

Heirarchy?
Mirror Principle (Mark Baker) - in morphology
syntactic deriviations mirror morhphological derivations and v.v.
(4) have 3 heads over VP.
as move, *left adjoin* to each.
[VZ]
[[VZ]Y]
[[[VZ]Y]X]
heirarchy mirrors morphological bracketing

could also imagine would *right adjoin* to its host every step along the way
[ZV]
[Y[ZV]]
[X[Y[ZV]]]

in wihch case preserve linear order morphological as internal organization.
in both cases, what is closer morphologically is closer in the tree.

when we look at the facts, get quite a lot of chaos, but certain regularity.
contrain self to prefixing case (right adjoin in lang Xhosa, a Bantu lang spoken in S Africa)

u- mama u-ya-wu -phek-a um-ngqusho
noun classes in Banta- u is on of them
1a-mother 2a-Agr-PresentTense-3agr-COOK-Asp 3A-samp

mother cooks samo
intereseting this is u (2aAgr) and wu (3agr), with tense in the middle.
this is right-adjoining.
a prefixing system.

In Quechua, spoken in Ecuador, that does suffixing, so left-adjoining.
riku-wa-rqa-nki
means:
see-1sg (object) -past-secondperson Z (subject)
"you saw me"

thus, what is closest to the stem? Once again, the object agreement closest AgrO. then T, then ArgS.
AgrS always farthest away from the stem.
see diagam (5).
onject moves to spec-AgrOP, subject moves successive cyclically first to spec-Tp, then to spec-AgrSP.
now, need not be same verb that subject and object agrees with (e.g. French), but in the two languages we have seen, for same verb.

Second advantage, can finally go back and assimilate assignment of case to sytax and the object. before, only under *m-command* could we assign nominative case under govenment. But see elsewhere that m-command not desirable. Now, we can assimilate accusative and nominative case assignment.
nominitive is assigned under spec-head agreement in AgrSP, and Accusative case is assigne under spec-head agreement in AgrOP. Both are thus assigned in spec-head agreement in AgrPs.

in many langs, get either agreement or case via either marking on the verb ... seem to be two sides of exactly the same coin. which makes sense since this is what is happening here.

even w/o that reason, we would still be happy with the result for case by itself, namely that now we have a unified account of structural case.
can even draw genitive case into this.
"In John's book" or better, "in yesterday;s newspaper"- no thematic relation, is structural case, can do same thing.

gave derivation on the board.

but how is this derivation legitimate.
and how come that one was legitimite and not diagram (6).
if that were legit,
could be able to say
"John kissed Mary,"
and it would mean Mary kissed John.
not written in stone that object always gets nom case?
so cannot pick on this as a reason.
this cannot be quite it, because not set in stone that sub has Nom case and object gets Nom. cases when they get the opposite.
must appeal to s/t else.

Must make sure that (5), with is AgrO, converges and (6) does not.

In (6), going from A position to next avaliable one for subject.
But in (5), crossing overs position, some things are npt local.
In (6), first onbect movement is nonlocal. But then, in 5, also nonlocal movement.
But one of the crossovers is a Guasti (object to AgrOp) answer, since intervening pos was assigned theta, but for subject movement, have problem: spec-AgrOP and spec-TP are A positions which are theta-bar. Thus Guasti insufficient. passing over potential landing site.

So we do not seem to making shortest possible move.
In the enormously technical discussion in chap 3, Chomsky finds a solution. Perhaps trite and trivial, perhaps even repulsive. Make two pos that seem not equally far away to be eqqually far away from the launch pad.
He calls euqally far away "equidistance."

Want spec-AgrOP and spec-TP to be equidistant.
under certain circumstances and *those alone* will be equidistant.

similar to trick Chomsky exploited in Barriers. an interplay between NP movement and head movement that makes this NP-movement licensed.

Need a few defs first. On page 17.
1) need to make two pos equidistance from launch-pad.


(55) euqidistant if they are in same minimal domain.
(56) domain = The m-command domain of the head

as diagramed in (7)

(57) *MIN* domain - cross out all from domain that dominated by anything else in same domain. So in diagram (7), keep YP, ZP, and disregard all else.

Can do same for Z. Min domain would be RP and QP.
Note that diff color circles around YP and RP.

On the tree (5), want to move subject into spect-TP position. But want spec-AgrOP and spec-TP in same minimal domain.
Note: minimal domain of a head is simply the spec and the complement.
But want them to be in same minimal domain.

Have in mind that domain and minimal domain defined for *chains*, and if can construct non-trivial chain, who known what might happen?

When take AgrO to T, create chain (AgrO, t).
The head is under T, and the foot of the chain is under AgrO.

Will not only ignore T, T', TP, but also AgrO, AgrO', AgrOP.
Now, spec-TP, spec-AgrOp, and complement and all under it are the domain.
min domain will be spec-TP, spec-Agr-OP, and VP complement of AgrO.

min domain of non-trivial chain that it, contains spec of head of the chain (=landing site), spec of foot of chain (where started out), and complement of foot. And that was what was cirled.
Note that both spec-TP and spec-AgrOP are both blue-circled, so they are in the same minimal domain. Thus they are *equidistant* from any position in the tree.

can do same thing for object, but only if V moves to AgrO, thus making chain, and can compute minimal domain so that see is equidistant.

Powerpoint presentation.

episode 1
overt movement of both NPs in a transitive clause
crossing paths derivation.
perform had movement, because no stationary head can have minimal domain with two specs in it. because any head has only one specifier.

Note: when move V, have V adjoined to it, so have AgrO, and under it, V and AgrO.

T has AgrO and T under it, and meanwhile AgrO has V and AgrO under it.

One more thing before go.
In order to make this happen, must be two head movements. V must move, and then AgrO must move. so verb must eventually be included in this complex. So predict here for overt object movement followed by overt subject movement to be legit, verb must surface quite high up in the tree. that derives Honbag?'s generalization, Swedish linguist, who identified fact that in Scandanavian, verb can only leave VP if verb ultimately surfaces as the very least in T. Illustrated in (59). But for now, do the assignment, but will be greatly helped with assignment by doing the reading for this sections, and reading for "important consequences" and "structure building..."

still need to rule out derivation on the right (6). answer will of course be that in this derivation, it is impsiible to get spec-TP, spec-AgrOP and spec-VP in same minimal domain. And one of questions is why they cannot be.

Syntax II - Class V

Rizzi had intelligent explanation of why do not have that-trace in pro-drop lang (that extract from VP position and not from IP, so have a local antecedent governor). But does not seem that can use this in variants of English, like Ozark, which does not drop pro but does have

so rather than explainaing in terms of ECP, perhaps drop minimality and explain in other way. Chomsky makes much use of minimality in Barriers. And comes with ingenious account.

Johni is loved ti by everyone.
is a case of NP movement. easy to satisfy ECP, since love assigns a theta role.
But still must worry about subjacency, that no inordinate amount of structure (barrier) being crossed. But for now, concentrating on ECP.

Johni is considered ti intelligent by everyone.
example on pg 12. #41.

now, considered does not assign a theta-role to ti, but rather to the proposition [John intelligent]. That is, [ti intelligent]

the theoremi was proven [ti false].
proven does not prove the theorem, but rather we are proving that "falsehood of theorem" holds.
no thematic relation between verb and the small-clause subject.
grammatical. thus, must be antecedent governed.
*How*?

Johni is [VP considered [AP ti intelligent by everyone.
there is government relationship between "considered" and ti. Thus, by minimality, VP becomes a minimality barrier for ti. Anyhting outside VP should be prevented from governing ti. But considered is not antecedent governor for ti. So we are in trouble.
In past, solved this problem via intermediate adjunction. (in case of passivization)

Johni is [VP t'i [VP considered [AP ti intelligent by everyone.
then, VP would still be a minimality governor, but t'i is not excluded by the VP so we do not need to worry about a minimality barrier.
Well, if we do, let us inspect what kind of chain we get.
ti is A position.
Johni is A position.
thus, we are dealing with an A chain. A chains mustn't have any A' position. But spec-VP is an A' position. Barriers assumes that every adjoined position is an A' position.
So have A-A'-A chain. This is a chain that can only result from improper movement. (cannot move from A to A' and back into A position. Violated principle C of the binding theory.)
So we cannot contemplate this, for while ECP satisfied, have Principle C violation.
Really must go out of position in one fell swoop. But then VP is a minimality barrier.

Chomsky has an interesting solution, on pg 13 in the handout.

Chomsky capitilized on three independent assumptions in the theory.
1) spec-head agreement involves coindexation. infl and spec-IP to be coindexed. which allows nominative case to be transported from Infl to spec-IP without government coming into play (with a strict-c-command govt. because otherwise Infl could not govern out of I'). in terms of "five feature agreement."
2) indexation is unique. when assign index, only index that will have.
3) segment/category distinction.

Johni Ii [VP is [VP considered [AP ti intelligent by everyone.

NP (ti) moves in one fell swoop to spec-IP (Johni). Not contemplating touchdown or adjunction in spec-VP. How is it antecedent government.
By coindexing Johni with Infl, make it a bit closer. Further, we must raise "is" up. (finite "be" must raise up to Infl).
Ii now branches our to isj and Ii. What index to we put on upper I.

Johni [Ii [isj][Ii] ][VP is [VP considered [AP ti intelligent by everyone.

Chomsky abstracts away, and says that "is" substitutes for Infl and thus takes on Infl's index i. Cannot have tw indices on one element. So:

Johni [I' Ii-isi [VP t' [VP considered [AP ti intelligent by everyone.

and have trace of isi in VP. But still cannot govern other trace because there is ANOTHER VP there. But now look at the tree. It looks just like VP adjunction!
e.g.
Who do you consider intelligent
So perhaps entire VP could be considered minimality barrier but not segment. Only difference is that one t has ' in one, while in present example, no '. But both are traces with index i.

Infinitival Case:

For John to be not considered intelligent. (people consider this not so good)
so "be" does not easily raise over negation.
needs to move to Infl but Infl was occupied by "to". (but if we are simply substituting...)

same issue with finite verbs (only aux "be" and "have" raise to Infl in finite, but pseudos such as "Seem"

In French, Italian, can get infinitival be to surface to the left of negation.

be will raise to I, replacing to, at *LF* (and no sooner). then have structure that you need, and have government for lowest trace.

What is immed relevant is would ti be +gamma marked at place that it is created. Recall that Lasnik and Seito required traces be gamma marked immediately upon creation. In fact, Chomsky and Lasnik in reworking of Lasnik and Seito assume the same.
Now, the trace of NP movement at the bottom emerges at S-structure. (since present in overt syntax.) given -gamma mark. And not a member of nontrivial chain. At s-structure, no need for "be" to have an index. So should make this bad once and for all. Once -gamma, always -gamma. At end of page 14, plainly incompatible with Lasnik and Seito in gamma marking, as well as Chomsky and Lasnik.

Works for finite case but not for infinitival. would have to give up assimption that traces of arg extraction assigned gamma mark at creation time. but that would wreak havok for that entire theory.

Another point where things don't quite fit. Managed to get ECP straightened out even for examples of this type is give up Lasnik and Seito about when gamma marked. What about subjacency. When perform movement, you mustn't pass a barrier. (Until now only looked at governement, but not at subjacency.) We are getting out of the entire VP in one fell swoop, getting out of whole VP. The whole VP will be a barrier for movement, not in terms of minimality, but because it is not L-marked, for it is the complement of Infl. And move way before fix the problem.
No question NP moved in overt syntax, because sentence starts Johni.

Maybe by raising V(be) to
I, I becomes lexical and can L-mark at LF. But subjacency was already violated at S-structure.

Problem with NP movement in barriers is thus not only problem with ECP (and ECP Chomsky has brilliant, completely mechanistic, solution for)

In face of this difficulty, Chomsky adds something else. If do not wish to give up gamma marking (which gives us argument/adjunct distinction). Lets pretend only need worry about ECP, but do not want to give up gamma marking immediately on creation.
Want to still have verb and infl coindexed. We will force this with aid of a new mechanism, "head-head agreement." (Ha-ha!)
Just coindexed them.
Minute have coindexed, be and considered are also heads, so hand it down to considered. And then considered the antecedent governor for ti.

But then everything coindexed with everyone else!


theta government:
* involves a head and a phrase
* involves theta-assignment
* involves head government
* does not involve conindexation

antecedent government
* involves (for phrasal movement) a phrase and a phrase
* does not involve theta-assignment
* does not involve government (in school books)
* *does*, crucially, involve coindexation.

so just about as different as can be. But under rubric of ECP, because of executive decision called government.

traces of object extraction always theta-governed, but now, ALSO antecedent govenment, because moving out of VP involves VP adjunction. Needed the trace for subjacency purposes, but now that we have got it, we can exploit it for antecedent governed.
and for subject traces, no theta-goverment. and for adjuncts.
so never really need theta-government.

44 - minimized chain condition is the successor of ECP and subjacency. make links in chain minimal. make the shortest move.
bright smiley face when have an economy condition.

Lucia's question.
showing that spec-VP will get you into trouble with Chomsky's account of NP movement which counted on uniqueness of coindexation.

some verbs are born w/o external theta roles, and some lose them as the result of an operation (unaccusatives). like being born with vs. losing an arm.
passives like unaccusatives - no external theta role. called absorbsion, before syntax.

the ship sank _____ . -- unaccusative (involving NP movement of the ship)
the ship was sunk ____ . -- passive (involving NP movement)

both are grammatical eng sentences.

(vs. "unergative" AVB ~ BV alternation)
J broke the vase ~the base broke
John sank the ship vs. The ship sank

so so far,
the ship sank _____ . -- unaccusative (involving NP movement of the ship)
the ship was sunk ____ . -- passive (involving NP movement)
very close. but does it really lose the causer (the one who caused the sinking) from the syntax altogether?
Cannot add:
the ship sank _____ *to collect the insurance
the ship sank _____ *intentionally

the ship was sunk ____ to collect the insurance
the ship was sunk ____ intentionally

PRO.
drew a tree, don;t have.
coindexation gets us into dire straits. because PRO will be conindexed. But John was killed cannot mean that John killed himself. And would *rule* out reading where John was not the killer.

relativized minimality. but does not cover that-trace effect, but said that was OK, seems to be perhaps handled by s/t else.

one of ingredients of relativized minimality:
NP(A pos) ... NP(A pos) .... t
is not allowed.
in the tree for Pro, not only do we have a rigid minimality but also a relativized minmality problem. Because internal PRO is in spec-VP in an A position.

something's gotta gve. find out next time.
chap 3 in black book - locality and equidistance.

read assigned readings for subjects _+ objects, and interaction of head movement to NPLT