class 10

assignments, then 29 and 30 on handout.

for next week, lexical matters 1, inflection and verb movement. fairly difficult reading.

the assignment:
all of us did assignment 1 correctly. just 1 quick point. what did not discuss - why idiomatic fixing must be a matter at LF. plainly pointless at S-structure, since no direct interface to semantics. Assumed do at LF component. Could we not say a matte of lexical or deep structure. Perhaps, but no saving of fact that idiomatic fixing done early, since best can do is partial but not complete fixing. Some can be ONLY after late movrmrnt has taken place.

he doesn't have a leg to stand on.

idiomatically, there is something particular about this special string of words.
on literal interp, can have s/t with no A' movement.
he does not stand on a leg.
or
he doesn't have to stand on a leg.

but have nothing like idiomatic interp of this. only literal.

in this instance, there is an ec that moved to head of the phrase (before word "to").

he doesn't have a leg [to stand on ec].

what exactly it is of creating infinitival relative that gives us this interp. without null movement, would not have this idiom. nothing about lexical interp of "leg" gives us this interp, or else would give it in other two exaples.
cannot blame on the D-structure, which does not have null-operator moveent. so is at a very late point that this whole thing gets frozen as an idiom. so must be at LF. and if for this particualr example, must be so at all idiomatic fixings.


second exercise: about examples in (1) and (2). during each other's trials.
what is the key difference?
only make sense if "at each other's trials" is a matrix adverbial.
in 2, two men is wholly contained at every level of representation in the embedded clause. would never c-command "each other"
but in 1, even though is in embedded clause, will not stay in subject, because since infinitival clause, needs to get its case, so needs to get its case higher up. does not do it in overt sytax, since does not appear to the left of "proved." we know that WILL move to spec-AGRP, but not in overt syntax. works in LF. and see diagram on back of returned assignment.
Adjoin highest to AGRO', could not be heigher, even though might want to T, but then would not c-command even at LF.


about question 3) bill was spoken to was grammatical.
passive absorbs verbs case (??)
...
can only happen if no case feature to check in complement of CP, would be no reason to move to spec-TP.
doing s/t to verb takes case assigning ability from verb. but shoud not take away ptroperties of preposition.
thus, when see runs up even in

thus, pseudopassive shows that ** dont have to assign case. then, can leave it to higher heads to check case against their complements. In (4) the only thing higher up that could is he, nominative. ...
if indeed "to" forgoes case checking, (the version of "to" that has no features to check) what will Bill in (3) depend on for case? must depend on verb's case feature in AGROP. no overt raising to spec-AGROP. But in LF, will. then ends in position outside of VP entirely, it c-commands everything inside the VP including "himself"

Of course, syntax for which does not get agreement.... but do not require that every derivation gives a grammatical output.

what learn from (4) is that "preposition to" when embedded under "speak" does not NEED to assign case, in which case must move to spec-AGROP.
what remains is the question is: why can they neglect to assign case? but assignmeent 3 not dependent on answering the q of why.

"reanalysis" (bleh)

(look up "impersonal passives")

page 29.
a bunch of conclusions along the road.
1) we concluded in conclusion that full-fledged movement to --- impossible. moving and merging. intermittently.
2)
because said we must check the strong feature before we move the functional heads that have that feature out, such that no longer bears the name,
3) in bullet, change impossible from superfluous.

4) tough movement constructions. John is togh to please.
John is not external arg of tough by himself.
arses thakns to idea of null op movement of null op movement. thus must be possible to create a predicate post deep structure. thus predication need not happen at deep struction. since theta--theory is predication, show that need not apply at D-structure.
...
chomsky acknowledges cases where theta-assignment foes not happen at D-structure, but in other cases he does assume it does.

5) picture noun cases. ONLY place can have binding theory apply is at LF.

what about other conds referring to S-structure?
(already taken out those which refer to D-structure)
are a few havent talked abot so far.

SUBJACENCY.
recall a lot of literature whether subjacency aplies at LF (perhaps in week 1 or 2). laid out possibiities. can salvage idea that subjacency is condition on derivations everywhere, and fact that do not see in certain (in situ WH) langs
entire island construction is pied piped all the way up to the top, and make sure that feature gets checked by "who". those who believe in it think have good evidence for this.

much eaiser possibilty - subjacency not cond on representation, only at *derivations*, so if move at LF, expect them to obey subjacency. but maybe wh-phrases in-situ does not move. maybe WH-feature is moved up to the top. then simply take WH-feature to the matching wh-feature of Comp and have them check each other.
why dont you ALWAYS just move the feature?
chomsky suggests: whenever do overt movement, want to take phonological features up, and want to take morphological features, and do not want to scatter them.
PF doesnt know what to do with scattered objects, which live part of life upstairs, part downstairs. strange, because phonology not particularly interested in +WH features.
only way *ensure* no scattering is to take entire thing up via pied piping.

NP = "who has features
NP {Sematic Features, Formal Features, Ph Features}

but that is up to spell-out. after spell-out, phonological features are stripped way.

NP {Sematic Features, Formal Features}

thus, there is no reason could not move just features. and since minimalism, if you CAN move just features, Will do so. so LF will just move features. and subjaceny is about category movement, and so perhaps auomatically not subject to the subjacency condition.
[not clear what feature movement is is not entirely clear. can never observe it directly. so little difficult to figure out what it is liek and how it behaves.]
this leads us to reconsider much of discussion of binding we have had. (one related q on final exam)

predication is s/t else said to have to aply at S-structure.
Chapter 1 of black book.
here again, feature movement important.
have seen cases where relative clause has null operator movement inside of it, causing
movement can create predicates.
but only phrasal movements.
movement of features will not.
that is why LF movement of WH-in situ will never give you a relative clause. and that is why relative clauses will always involve WH-movement, even in langs that otherwise do not.

finally, of course we know parasitic gap constructions not in-situ.
if Wh-in-situ only launches feature up, then the best could get parasitically is parasitic 'bundle of wh-features' but not a parasitic gap.
know parasitic gap subject to 'matching'. if real is NP, then parasitic is NP, etc. if only move features, would not sound like a gap. a gap has no features. (??) again because LF movement is not phrasal movement, invloves features only.

also find that in minimalist theory, no reason to refer to govenment. always assigned via sisterhood in theta-theory. now elim from all other components of theory. no theta-government. since reduced to locality condition on chain links.
also need not refer to govt in terms of case. in fact cannot saty it anymore, since now is checked under spec-head agreement.
and further, if successful of getting rid of principles A and B of binding theory, no need for govt.
(Maybe eventually will be able to talk of reciprocals ...)

principle B. sa elsewhere case. use anaphor., if cannot, use pronoun. if cannot, use R-expression. (get rid of need for govt). principle C as ultimate elsewhere case.
Then, neither government nor binding is fundamental to the theory. even though the theory was called govenment and binding. (only called that initially because had explicit discussion about govt and binding. historical accident)

what does minimalism hang on to?
modularity (though less so, since binding gone as a modukle and perhaps some modules can be dispensed with)
derivationalism.
and X' theory.
move to pg 32. preserves in toto.
in fact, section in chap 3 in black book with X' theory in title.
but is X' theory really fundamentally important (with XP X' X) or even right? could we do with fewer? could we dispense with all?

X' is a somewhat lame duck. cannot be selected (like XP), cannot select (like a head), and it cannot be moved.
also discovered that X' could not be adjoined to. This does not look very good.
good reaon to think X' can be deleted or subject to

You've got your troubles. I've got mine ec.
[mine [N' ec]

you like that book, i like that one.

but cannot replace "one" in some situations. (students fo lingustics)

discussed in great legth structure of clause.
clause (John kissed Mary) not just the VP.
why cannot there be functional structure outside of the NP.
in fact reason to beleive that there is.

instead, NP looks like (94). stuff between det and NP. but certainly more to NP than just an NP. Then need not replace N' category with "one" or elispses. Rather, do (95a,b) with a full NP being empty, or full NP "one", not an N'.

no reason to think X' does anything. just sitting there. why would we want to have special name, why not call it XP?
is one place where essential. target always projects, never the moved constituent. (that is, if move WP to spec-XP, is called XP. Know because should have same name as X' level)
but if X' called XP, why should not call the target WP? phrase structurally speaking, no reason not so.
consider two scenarios.
covert movement.
simply doesnt happen if covert movement is just feature movement, since do not move WP, only move to head positions, not phrasal.
but overt movement can move phrsaes
{john seems likely to have been killed} should overt phrasal movement.
why cannot result in this (tree).
what is it that moves overt movement? a strong feature of X, which causes WP to move. (X has strong FF, which can be checked off by WP which has matching feature, *within XP*) but if called WP, not in XP.
cannot put John kissed Mary in NP position.
blocked because the smaller XP is where must be checked, else is in larger structure. so cannot happen.
so get * on the two trees without invoking XP-X' distinction.

more damning question. show that if have it, get bad results.
pg 33, bottom of page.
anti-symmetry. idea behind this simple. all heirarchical structure must be directly translatable to linear order and v.v..
direct translation between word order and heirarchical structure.

assymetry = cannot be both to left and right of X.
therefore, heirarchy must be asymetrical.
make pairs of nonterminals where c-commands, and list of terminals where a must precede b.


in next example:
problem is that J-M is in set of terminals, but L-I in set.
image of J-M is i-m.
image of is
this tells us that M precedes I, I preceded M.
pg 34:
(104) is exactly what (102) transates into

but 102 is ill-formed.
solution. have two L's. see inside.

next week, start with top of page 36