grammatical foundations

Exercise 15

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Exercise 16

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Exercise 17

The general problem is that the Theta Criterion (a -role must be assigned to one and only one argument and an argument must bear one and only one -role) is violated for some reason or another.

a)The verb promise should have two more arguments to which the theme and the beneficiary thematic roles should be assigned, e.g. Penny promised a present.

b)There are too many arguments in the sentence. Since sleep is an intransitive verb, there is no need for an object (an extra DP). Thus, the car cannot receive a thematic role from the verb, so it cannot occur in the sentence.

c)The verb give cannot give its Theme role to any of its arguments because they already have one role and one argument can have only one thematic role in accordance with the Theta Criterion. Thus, one argument with the Theme role should be present, e.g. Gary gave Greg a guitar.

d)One argument is missing from the sentence: the verb give cannot assign all of its thematic roles to its arguments, more precisely, the Agent role remains unassigned. An acceptable version would be e.g. Mick gave a cent to Marion.

e)There are too many arguments in the sentence. The verb eat is transitive, thus, it requires the presence of two arguments (DPs) and to them it can assign two thematic roles. It means that the PP (for Anne) is superfluous in the sentence because it cannot have a thematic role.

f)Again, there is one more argument in the sentence than necessary. The verb dance is intransitive, that is, it can assign one thematic role, to its subject. If another argument (here Dora) is present in the sentence, it cannot get a thematic role, and the sentence becomes ungrammatical.

Exercise 18

Thematic roles are always given at the level of D-structure, that is, before movement takes place. However, movements can be motivated by Case. It means that Case is relevant only at the level of S-structure, in other words, DPs usually get their Case in their surface positions.

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Exercise 18

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Exercise 19

The second member of the first pair, the second member of the second pair and the first member of the third pair are exemplified in the text. Bar-level constituents can never appear as adjuncts.

(iii) Adverbial PPs and clauses are discussed in the text as potentially exocentric. Constructions which appear to have more than one head: participles, gerunds.

(iv)

(1)a He being the owner, we were all given a free drink. b Who wants ice cream? Me.

c Her cheat on him? Never.

The sentence (1a) contains what is traditionally called an absolutive construction, where the subject of the non-finite clause can be in nominative. This construction is also grammatical with an accusative subject in the non-finite clause, though. That is in line with assumptions about the distribution of nominative and accusative forms in English but the nominative form is not, its grammaticality is unexplained – perhaps it is some default form of the pronoun that occurs in situations when no case assigner is present. This is contradicted by the sentence in (1b) where in a structure that contains no case assigner it is the accusative form that appears and not the nominative – perhaps it is the accusative which is the default form in English. The situation is the same in sentence (1c), it is the accusative and not the nominative form that occurs. One can accept the assumption that in English it is the accusative which functions as the default form; the nominative form in (1a) is unexplained.

Chapter 4

Check Questions

Q1 The starting point is that proper nouns and plural count nouns do not contain determiners. However, they have the same distribution as other nominal phrases that do contain determiners. Determiners are marked for number (in languages other than English for gender and even case) and they encode the definite–indefinite distinction (e.g. a man versus the man) which is not marked on the noun. Hence it is assumed that determiners are heads taking NP complements. As regards proper nouns, they can in fact appear with determiners even in English and it is normal for a proper noun to appear with a determiner in German (ich bin der Hans). Those proper nouns that do not tolerate a determiner appear with a phonologically empty (unpronounced) D head. This is supported by the interpretation of the proper noun as definite – determiners are the locus of the definiteness feature and not nouns. Plural count nouns represent the opposite in that when they appear without a determiner they are interpreted as

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Check Questions

indefinite. Again, there is a phonologically empty D head responsible for this interpretation. The empty definite determiner takes only NP complements headed by proper nouns while the empty indefinite determiner takes only NP complements headed by plural nouns.

Q2 Pronouns are in complementary distribution with determiners which suggests that they occupy the same structural slot. A pronoun DP containing a D head takes no NP complement as both the semantic content and the syntactic properties of such a DP are provided by the pronoun itself.

Q3 D heads project the features [±definite], [±plural]. Some D heads obligatorily take an NP complement (e.g. articles), some obligatorily stand without a complement (pronouns) and some take optional NP complements (e.g. demonstrative pronouns).

Q4 When the possessor is a lexical DP in a DP, the morpheme ’s is attached to it. This morpheme attaches to phrases rather than heads (e.g. John’s book, the man living next door’s dog). However, when the possessor is a pronoun, it is the pronoun itself that bears the possessive feature. Possessors and determiners seem to be in complementary distribution in English (e. g. *the his book/*his the book) which suggests that they both occupy the D head position. A possessor like the man living next door’s can be replaced by the possessive pronoun his. If possessive pronouns are in the D head position, then the man living next door’s should likewise occupy that position. However, this is a phrase to which the ’s morpheme is attached and phrases cannot occur in head positions. The phrase can be substituted by the possessive pronoun, hence the possessive pronouns should also have the status of a phrase. There is an available phrasal position, however: [Spec, DP]. Furthermore, there is a head position available for the ’s morpheme which does not behave like a phrase in any respect: D. Thus, DP possessors occupy the specifier position in a DP, while ’s the head position. Although as a bound morpheme it will always attach to the phrase in DP, it is this element that is in complementary distribution with other types of determiners.

Q5 As it is assumed that NPs are inside DPs, APs and PPs occurring inside NPs as modifiers may be conceived of as adjuncts inside DPs. However, these modifying elements are always inside the NP, they never modify pronouns. Some adverbs, on the other hand may be argued to be actual adjuncts of the functional nominal projection and not the lexical one, as they appear preceding a D head, e.g. only, almost.

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Suggested answer forExercise 1

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Suggested answer forExercise 1

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