Andrew Radford - Linguistics An Introduction [Second Edition]

(438)

(many sheep x)(Sharkey sheared x)

Syntactic arguments have now been advanced to suggest that quantified DPs

(covertly) adjoin to TP at the covert syntactic level of Logical Form (LF). For

(437), this gives the (partial) LF in (439):

(439)

CP

TP

C

ϕ

DP

TP

many sheep

t

Sharkey sheared

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345

And (439), because of its similarity to (438), provides an appropriate representation for the semantics of quantified DPs to proceed in the required fashion.

If, finally, we return to our set of examples in (420), we can see that in all cases, their LFs will be semantically appropriate. These appear in schematic form in (440):

(440) a.

every sheepi [ti snores]

b.

most sheepi [ti snore]

c.

no sheepi [ti snores]

d.

which sheepi [ti snores]

The only relevant difference in these examples is that for (440d) the movement of the operator phrase is overt to spec-CP, whereas for (440a, b, c) the movement of the quantified DP is covert in the derivation of LF and involves adjoining the quantified DP to TP (exercises 4, 5 and 6).

Having introduced the possibility of covert movement into our theory of

grammar, we can now sketch the overall organisation of a grammar as in (441): (441)

merger, agreement,

θ-role,

case-marking,

overt

assignment,

Lexicon

selection and overt

syntactic

covert

LF

movement

structure

movement

operations

operations

phonological

operations

PF

According to this organisation, a derivation starts with a selection of items from the lexicon. These then undergo merger, agreement, case-marking, selection

and overt movement, as described in sections 19 and 21. When these operations are complete, the resulting structure is passed to the phonological component which determines how a structure is pronounced, taking account of issues which have been introduced in parts I and II of this book – obviously, the phonological component must have access to the results of overt movements. Additionally,

however, this structure is passed on to the semantic component, which maps it to an appropriate Logical Form. This process will assign thematic roles to DPs and also include covert movements (operations not seen by the phonology and not

‘heard’ by native speakers).

Exercises

1.

In the text, we introduced the following θ-roles with illustrative

examples:

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senten ces

Agent; Instrument; Affected Object (sometimes differentiated into

Patient and Theme); Location; Source; Goal

This list is by no means complete, and the following additional two

θ-roles appear in Saeed (2003, 149–50):

Experiencer: ‘the entity which is aware of the action or state des-

cribed by the predicate but which is not in control of the action or

state’.

Beneficiary: ‘the entity for whose benefit the action was performed’.

For each of the following sentences, try to decide what θ-role

should be assigned to the italicised DPs, commenting on any difficul-

ties you encounter.

(a) Superman found the solution for Lois Lane

(b) The Nile flows from Lake Victoria to the Mediterranean Sea

(c) The Dark Destroyer fears order

(d) Order frightens the Dark Destroyer

(e) The dog is under the table

(f) Papa Lazaru attached the washing to the line with pegs

(g) The Ming vase broke

(h) The mallet broke the Ming vase

(i) Jackson broke the Ming vase

(j) Jackson broke the Ming vase with a mallet

Discuss what you can conclude about the lexical representation of the

lexeme BREAK from (g)–(j).

2.

In the text, we suggested that the complement of V position might be

linked to the θ-role Affected Object. It has sometimes been suggested

that argument structure alternations such as those in the pairs below

cast doubt on this simple identification:

(a) i. Smith loaded hay onto the cart

ii. Smith loaded the cart with hay

(b) i. Jones taught Swahili to Brown

ii. Jones taught Brown Swahili

If we suppose that (ai) and (aii) describe exactly the same event, it is difficult to reconcile this with hay being the Affected Object

in (ai) and the cart being the Affected Object in (aii). By carefully considering the circumstances where such pairs of examples might

be appropriately used, come to a view on whether the claim that the

Affected Object role should be linked to the complement of V position

can be defended.

HINT: It has been suggested that appropriate use of (aii) requires the cart to be filled with hay, whereas this is not the case

for (ai).

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347

3.

In the text, we have suggested that the thematic role of Agent might be

linked to the specifier of T position. Can this suggestion be maintained

in the light of examples such as (405a, b)?

HINT: You should consider carefully the consequences of adopting

this view for the correctness of the syntactic representations we have

introduced in previous sections.

4.

Consider the sentence in (a):

(a) John visited London after Mary did

It is often assumed that the interpretation of such a sentence involves

‘copying’ the VP from the clause John visited London into the position

of did in the second clause to give (b) and that this ‘VP-copying’

process is part of the procedure of deriving the LF for such a sentence.

(b) John visited London after Mary visited London

Suppose that this is correct, and consider (c) with the partial labelled bracketing as indicated:

(c) John [VP saw [DP everything that Mary did]]

In (c), we have the VP saw everything that Mary did which is produced by merging the head V saw with the complex quantificational DP everything that Mary did. What problem arises if you

apply VP-copying to (c)? Does the same problem arise if VP-copying takes place after covert movement? Using these questions, you should

be able to construct another argument for the necessity of covert

movement.

5.

A common observation is that a sentence such as (a) is ambiguous: (a) Some student voted for every candidate

The interpretations are: (i) there is some particular student who voted

for all candidates; (ii) for each candidate, it is possible to find a student who voted for that candidate. This ambiguity is referred to as a scope

ambiguity, and we say that for (i), some student has wide scope and

every candidate narrow scope. These relative scopes are reversed

for (ii). It is a common approach to scope to suppose that it can be

linked to ‘height’ in the structure of LF, with ‘higher’ operator

expressions having wider scope. Try to develop an account of how

the ambiguity in (a) might be represented using the ideas developed in this section.

6.

Contradicting the claim appearing in exercise 5, it has sometimes been suggested that the relative scope of quantified DPs can be read

directly off their surface order. Thus, (a) in exercise 5 has been claimed to be unambiguous, allowing only the interpretation where some student

has wide scope and every candidate has narrow scope. Certainly, this

interpretation appears to be preferred, and we can, it seems, reverse this

preference by passivising the sentence, as in (a0) below:

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senten ces

(a0) Every candidate was voted for by some student

Here the interpretation where every candidate is voted for but not by