Andrew Carnie - Syntax

What should we make the words ending in -ish and -ian in sentences (b) and (d)? Are they adjectives? If not, how can we account for the fact that these words end in -ish and - ian ? There are many possible answers to this question.

CPS2. NOMINAL PRENOMINAL MODIFIERS 15

[Critical and Creative Thinking; Challenge]

Part 1 : By the syntactic distributional criteria given to you in the text, what part of speech should the underlined words in the following examples be?

1 the leather couch

2 the water spout

Part 2 : By contrast, what do the following facts tell us about the parts of speech of leather

and water ?

1 the leather

2 the water

3 ?the very leather couch (cf. the very red couch)

4 ?the very water spout (cf. the very big spout)

5 *The more leather couch/*The leatherer couch (cf. the bigger couch)

6 *The more water spout

7 *The waterest spout

CPS3. MOHAWK INCORPORATION 16

[Data Analysis; Challenge]

Part 1: Consider the following sentence from Mohawk, an Iroquoian language of North America. Based on this very limited data what parts of speech are rak and ’neróhkw

1) Ka-rak-ʌ́-hne’ thíkʌ o-’neróhkw-a’.

NEUT-be.white-PRES-STAT that NEUT-box-NOMINALIZER

“That box is white.”

(NEUT stands for Neuter gender, PRES stands for present tense; STAT stands for stative aspect. Gender typically appears on nouns but can also appear on verbs, tense and aspect typically appear on verbs.)

Part 2: Now consider this sentence where the morpheme meaning box has been “incorporated” into the same word as rak . This is a common morphological process in the language (see chapter 18 for more details on this phenomenon)

2) Ka-’neróhkwa-rak-ʌ́-hne’ thíkʌ.

NEUT-box-be.white-PRES-STAT that

“That box is white.”

What part of speech is ’neróhkwa in this sentence? Does it even make sense to talk about this word having a part of speech? Why or why not? Explain your answer.

CPS4: INTENSIFIERS

[Application of Knowledge; Challenge]

English has a subcategory of adverbs called intensifiers. This class includes very, rather, too (when used before an adjective), quite , less , nearly, partly, fully, mostly , and sometimes .

Question 1 : Is this subcategory an open class part of speech or a closed class part of speech? Explain your answer.

Question 2 : Describe the distribution of this subcategory. In particular describe where it can appear relative to other adverbs (and adjectives). Can other adverbs appear in this environment?

CPS5. COMPLEMENTARY DISTRIBUTION

[Critical Thinking; Challenge]

In a grey textbox in section 2.4, it’s argued that adjectives and adverbs are in complementary distribution and thus might be part of the same super-category A. Are N and V in complementary distribution? What about Adv and V? What about N and Adj? Create examples to show whether these categories are in complementary distribution. If any are in complementary distribution with the others what does this tell us about the parts of speech? Next consider whether any functional categories are in complementary distribution with lexical categories.

CPS6. SUBCATEGORIES OF ADVERBS

[Application of Skills and Knowledge; Challenge]

Your goal in this problem set is to develop a set of subcategories for adverbs. Consider the following adverbs. When doing these tests don’t put any extra stress or focus on the adverb – try to say the sentence naturally without emphasizing the adverbs. Also, don’t put extra pauses before or after any of the adverbs.

luckily, earnestly, intently, hopefully, probably, certainly, frequently, patiently, always, completely, almost, again, evidently, frankly, demandingly, yesterday, necessarily

Part 1 : For each adverb determine:

1 Can it appear before the subject? (e.g., Unbelievably, I don’t know any pixies .)

2 Can it appear between the T (e.g., will, have, is, can ) and the verb? (e.g., I have often wondered about the existence of pixies .)

3 Can it appear after the object? Or at the end of the sentence? (e.g., Pixies eat mushrooms vigorously .)

4 Can it appear between an object and a PP in a ditransitive (e.g., I put the book carefully

on the table.)

(Note: these adverbs may appear in several of these positions.)

Part 2 : Group the adverbs together into subcategories based on your answers to part 1.

Part 3 : Within each group you may find more subtle orderings. For example, within the subcategory of adverbs that can appear between auxiliaries and verbs there may be an ordering of adverbs. Try putting multiple adverbs in each position. What are the orderings you find?

CPS7. SUBCATEGORIES OF ADJECTIVES

[Application of Knowledge; Challenge]

Just as there are positional differences among adverbs (see Challenge Problem Set 6), we find an ordering of adjectives with respect to each other. Below is a list of adjectives. Pair each adjective with every other adjective and see which must come first in a noun phrase. Try to come up with a general ordering among these adjectives. (Although in the text I’ve told you to include numerals with the class of determiners, I’ve listed them here as adjectives. For the rest of the book treat them as determiners.)

big, young, blue, desperate, two, scaly, thick

One word of caution: it is sometimes possible to put some adjectives in any order. However, many of these orders are only possible if you are using the adjective contrastively or emphatically. For example, you can say the old rubber sneaker with a normal non-contrastive meaning, but the rubber old sneaker is only possible when it has a contrastive emphatic meaning ( the RUBBER old sneaker as opposed to the leather one ). Don’t let these contrastive readings interfere with your subcategorization.

CPS8. ANIMACY

[Application of Knowledge; Challenge]

Part 1 : The term animacy refers to whether something is alive or not. We haven’t included any animacy restrictions in our subcategorization of verbs or nouns in the main body of the text. Consider the following data:

1 Susan bought some flowers for her mother.

2 Susan bought her mother some flowers.

3 Susan bought some flowers for her birthday.

4 *Susan bought her birthday some flowers.

Construct feature structures to explain the acceptability of (d). Hint: you’ll need to use choice brackets {} to do this.

Part 2 : Observe the following limited data from Spanish (taken from Legate 2005). When do you use the dative marker a in Spanish? How would you encode this with a feature structure for the verb vimos ?

“We saw Juan’s house.”

CPS9. IMPLICIT ARGUMENTS 17

[Creative Thinking; Challenge]

Above we claimed that the verb give requires either an NP and a PP or two NPs (i.e. Heidi gave a punchbowl to Andrew and Heidi gave Andrew a headache ). But consider sentences like the following:

1 I gave blood.

2 I don’t give a darn.