Andrew Radford - Linguistics An Introduction [Second Edition]

It is interesting to note that the question counterpart of He enjoys it in CSE is formed by the use of the auxiliary do as in (383):

(383)

Does he enjoy it?

Why should we require do in questions like (383), but not in the corresponding statement He enjoys it? The answer is that statements like He enjoys it are

TPs headed by a weak T which therefore does not need to be filled. In contrast, questions are CPs headed by a strong C which can only be filled by moving

an auxiliary like does from its normal T position into C. This is shown informally in (384) below (where CP in 384a is headed by a null complementiser marking the sentence as declarative in force, and TP in (384a) is headed by a present tense affix which lowers onto the verb enjoy by Affix Attachment, so leaving T empty):

(384) a.

[

φ

φ

CP [C

] [TP He [T ] [VP [V enjoys] it]]]

b.

[CP? [C Does] [TP he [T does ] [VP [V enjoy] it]]]

In (384b), the auxiliary does (like other auxiliaries) originates in the head T

position of TP, and then moves into C because C is strong in main clause questions and so must be filled. Since the auxiliary do has no semantic content of its own (and hence is usually called a dummy auxiliary), it is used purely as a last resort, as a way of satisfying the requirement for a strong C to be filled.

The Null Subject Parameter

Our discussion in this section has focused on two different parameters,

both relating to the strength of functional heads. Let’s now turn to look at a rather different kind of parametric variation. Early Modern English has the interesting property that it allowed the subject of a finite verb or auxiliary to be null, as we see from the fact that the italicised words in (385) below don’t have overt subjects: (385) a.

Hast any more of this? (Trinculo, The Tempest, II. ii)

b.

Sufficeth, I am come to keep my word (Petruchio, Taming of the Shrew, III. ii) c.

Would you would bear your fortune like a man (Iago, Othello, IV. i)

d.

Lives, sir (Iago, Othello, IV. i, in reply to ‘How does Lieutenant Cassio?’) Since the null subject in sentences like (385) occurs in a nominative position (as we see from the fact that we could use nominative thou in place of the null subject in 385a), it is generally taken to be a null nominative pronoun and is designated pro (affectionately known as ‘little pro’, in order to differentiate it from the rather

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senten ces

different ‘big PRO’ subject found in infinitives in CSE, see section 20). We say that languages like EME which have a null nominative pronoun are null subject languages. By contrast, CSE is not a null subject language, as we see from the fact that the present-day counterparts of (385) given in (386) require (italicised) overt subjects:

(386) a.

Have you got any more of this?

b.

It’s enough that I have come to keep my word

c.

I wish you would bear your fortunes like a man

d.

He is alive, sir

We might therefore say that a further parameter of variation between languages is the Null Subject Parameter (NSP) which determines whether finite verbs and auxiliaries do or don’t license (i.e. allow) null subjects. Like the two parameters we have already discussed, NSP is binary in nature, so that finite verbs and auxiliaries in a given language either do or do not license null subjects (as well as overt subjects).

But why should it be that finite verbs and auxiliaries licensed null subjects in EME but no longer do so in CSE? There are two differences between EME and

CSE which seem to be relevant here. The first is a syntactic one: verbs raise to T in EME (and so come to be contained within the TP constituent which contains the null subject), but not in CSE. The second is a morphological one, in that verbs carried a richer set of agreement inflections in EME than they do in CSE. Whereas third person singular -s is the only regular agreement inflection found on present tense verbs in CSE, verbs in EME had both second person and third person

inflections (e.g. present tense verbs carried -st in the second person singular, -s or -th in the third person singular and -n in the plural). Shakespearean examples illustrating this are given in (387):

(387) a.

Thou see’st how diligent I am (Petruchio, Taming of the Shrew, IV. iii)

b.

The sight of lovers feedeth those in love (Rosalind, As You Like It, III. iv) c.

Winter tames man, woman and beast (Grumio, Taming of the Shrew, IV. i)

d.

And then the whole quire hold their hips and laugh, and waxen in their mirth (Puck, Midsummer Night’s Dream, II. i)

It is reasonable to suggest that in a language like EME, in which the verb moves into T and so is contained within the same phrase (= TP) as the null subject, the relatively rich agreement inflections carried by verbs and auxiliaries served to identify the null subject (e.g. the -st inflection on hast in (385a) is a second person singular inflection and hence allows us to identify the null subject as a second person singular subject with the same properties as thou). But in a language like CSE, there are two factors which prevent the use of null subjects. Firstly, verbs don’t raise to T (and we are assuming that only a verb in T can identify a subject in spec-TP); and secondly, agreement morphology is too impoverished to allow

identification of a null pro subject (since first and second person verb forms aren’t generally distinct in CSE).

Syntactic variation

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Parametric differences between English and German

Up to now, our discussion of parametric variation has been limited to

different varieties of English. What of parametric variation between different languages? To illustrate inter-language variation, we’ll conclude this section with a brief look at clause structure in a language, German, which is closely related to English in historical terms, but which is sufficiently different to illustrate further the nature of syntactic variation. As a starting point for our discussion, consider the following sentence:

(388)

Ich weiss [dass der Adrian das Buch gelesen hat]

I know

[that the Adrian the book read

has]

‘I know that Adrian has read the book’

(Names – e.g. Adrian – in colloquial German can be premodified by a determiner like der ‘the’, suggesting that they are indeed DPs; we can also use a null

determiner in place of der.) The bracketed clause in (388) has the structure (389) below (we don’t show the internal structure of the two DPs der Adrian and das Buch, since this is of no immediate concern):

(389)

CP

C

TP

dass

DP

T'

der Adrian

VP

T

hat

DP

V

das Buch

gelesen

One important word-order difference between German and English, which is

immediately apparent from (389), is that verbs and auxiliaries are positioned after their complements in German but before their complements in English: so, in English we have bought a book and has bought a book, whereas in German we find (the

equivalent of) a book bought and a book bought has. This suggests that a further parameter of variation between languages (which we will call the Head Position Parameter) relates to the relative ordering of heads with respect to their complements: more specifically, we say that English has head-first word order within VP

and TP (because a head verb or auxiliary precedes its complement), whereas German has head-last order within VP and TP; but both have the same head-first order within CP and DP, since complementisers and determiners in both languages precede their complements. Note that this parameter (like the others we have already examined) is binary, in that heads can either precede or follow their complements.