Linguistics: Syntax II Movement Constraints

Ling 001 Syntax II Linguistics Syntax II Movement Constraints 2009 Phrases In the last lecture, we talked about simple phrases; e g Noun Phrases like The dog The big dog The big dog that John was talking to In this lecture, we will look at how phrases and larger objects are derived by rules, and how phrases can be moved from one position to another How structures and meanings (including ambiguity) are mediated by syntax, particularly those “hidden” structures that we don’t see or hear but actu.

Linguistics: Syntax II

Movement & Constraints 2009

• In the last lecture, we talked about simple

phrases; e.g Noun Phrases like

– The dog

– The big dog

– The big dog that John was talking to

• In this lecture, we will look at how phrases and

larger objects are derived by rules, and how

phrases can be moved from one position to

another

– How structures and meanings (including ambiguity ) are mediated by syntax, particularly those “hidden”

structures that we don’t see or hear but actually use

– “John is easy to please” vs “John is eager to please”

– Some basic rules and two case studies of hidden

structures that combine linguistics with psychology

Notations: Noun Phrase

Example

• Let’s talk about Noun Phrases (NPs) to begin with

These have (among other properties) the following:

– The optional presence of an determiner (‘the’, ‘a’,

etc.)

– The optional presence of more than one adjective

• We can write a rule that generates NPs in the following way:

NP > (determiner) AP* N

This means that a noun phrase consists of minimally a head N; it also can have

-an optional determiner (parentheses)

-any number of Adjective Phrases (AP), including zero

• From this rule, and rules that say ‘N >cat,…’, A > ‘big,

furry, irritable…’, we can generate a number of phrases

Adjuncts (are optional)

• We also need a way of adding adjoined

phrases like in [the cat [in the hat]]

• The PP here is adjoined, to “modify” the

meanings of the NP The object that it is

attached to is still an NP

• The rule that we can talk about is like this:

NP > NP PP ( the cat in the hat )

There are other options for this, but this will generate the right structure, along with one more rule:

PP > P NP (in the hat)

Verb Phrases

• We will also need rules to derive VPs

• Consider:

VP > V NP

This says that a VP consists of a V and an NP

• This will define our set of transitive verbs: those

that have objects (more on this in a few slides)

• To be explicit, we could indicate this as

VP > V-trans NP

Where

V-trans > kick, hit, kill, ….

We want to exclude V’s like sleep, arrive, etc from

this context

More Verb Phrases

• We can also have a PP adjunct to a verb

phrase; often these specify how the action was performed, where it was performed, etc.

– Mary fixed the car with a wrench

– John kicked the ball in the garden

• A rule like the one that we employed above

will work here:

– VP > VP PP

• VP > V NP, NP->NP PP, VP->VP PP: this is

getting confusing

(Structural) Ambiguities

• Notice that both NPs and VPs can have PPs

attached to them

• In some cases, this results in what is called a

structural ambiguity: one string has more

than one structure associated with it, and

means different things depending on what the structure is

• Example: I shot an elephant in my pajamas.(How did it get in there I don’t know)

– Reading 1: I shot an elephant while wearing my

pajamas

– Reading 2: The elephant I shot wore my pajamas for

some reason.

More ambiguity

• Juvenile Court to Try Shooting Defendant

• Stolen Painting Found by Tree

• Kids Make Nutritious Snacks

• Obesity Study Looks for Larger Test Groups

• British Left Waffles on Falkland Islands

• Red Tape Holds Up New Bridges

• Hospitals Sued by 7 Foot Doctors

• Bush Wins on Nomination, but More Lies Ahead

Analysis: Recall un-lock-able

• We can understand these ambiguities in terms

of our rules above The ambiguity depends on whether the VP is modified by the PP

(reading2) or the NP is so modified (reading 1)

• When we add rules for distinguishing

transitives from intransitives, etc., we can

derive a wide range of sentence types

• 'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

• Did grye and gimble in the wabe:

• And mimsy were the borogoves,

• And the moeme raths outgrabe

• What is/are “toves”? “wabe”?

• “gimble” cannot mean something like “like” Its syntax is intransitive, so it must involve only one argument

Arguments, etc.

• In some sense, many things that happen in a sentence depend on what the verb in the

sentence is:

– Transitive verb: kick

• Two ‘arguments’ of kick, like f(x,y)

– Intransitive verb: sleep

• One argument, like f(x)

• In order to be more precise about this, we

need to distinguish grammatical (syntactic) position from semantic role

Roles and Positions

• Consider a transitive verb like kick

– This has two arguments

– The arguments are

• The agent (the kicker)

• The patient (the thing kicked)

– In active sentences in English

• The agent is the subject

• The patient is the object

Verbs and Arguments:

Introducing Movement

• Verbs are looking for their arguments in

particular positions ; remember the rule we

formulated above:

– Patients appear in object position (inside the VP)

• What about the passive? Here is where the

process of movement is important

• We can start with the VP [kick [the ball]]

• Then the object of the verb kick is moved to subject

position as part of the passive rule

• It is still interpreted as the Patient, because that is where it

starts

• In order to be interpreted as a patient, the NP has to have

some relationship to the position where it came from; this

is why traces are important:

• [The ball] was kicked _

Other cases of movement

• The same principle applies in other areas as

well: whenever an element appears in a

position that is NOT where it is interpreted meaning-wise

• Questions

– John ate the apples.

– What did John eat

• Relative clauses

– John was talking to Mary.

– The woman [who John was talking to _]

• Topicalization

– John likes these apples.

– These apples John likes _.

A brief look at some other

Old(er) English

• In Modern English: only the auxiliary does so

– E.g., Do you always read the books?

Rules + transformations

• In all languages: S->NP VP, VP-> (Adv) VP

• VP->V NP, or

What does the verb go?

• In French/Old English, it

moves to a position above

the adverb but after the

subject

• This is the position called

TENSE, where tense like

present/past is represented

– E.g., We like exams We

DO like exams We DID

like exams

– Revise the rules: S NP

TP, TP->Tense VP…

Transformations across

languages

• French/OE: main verb moves to the Tense

position

• English: main verb stays put If TENSE needs

to be filled, we put an auxiliary there

– I DID like exams.

• In Shakespeare/French, the main verb moves

to the beginning of sentence to form questions

• In Modern English, the main verb stays and the auxiliary verb moves to the beginning

French/Old English vs English

Constraints on Movements

• Much like syntactic rules, which don’t just

combine anything and everything, movement

is also restricted: some of these “traffic” laws are quite bizarre

• Recall the auxiliary movement rule (last

lecture) in English questions: no movement of the first auxiliary

• I shot an elephant in my pajamas.

– Two readings

• What (clothes) did I shoot an elephant in?

– How many readings?

Of Elephants and Pajamas

There are structures out of which movement is not possible And this is quite general across sentences and languages

Impossible movements, Possible

Meanings

A-over-A Principle, or No

Grandparent Left Behind

• In general, a small NP cannot move out of a large NP

Even young children know this

• Three year olds saw a play.

• A dog broke a leg.

• A little girl fixed it up with a bandage

• “What did she fix the puppy with _?

• Reality gives two answers, but constraint on movement makes only one possible and

that’s how children answered

Another psychological

dimension

• To this point, the discussion of traces has been motivated by considerations of how verbs find their arguments

• A substantial research program in linguistic

theory asks further questions for other cases that look like movement

• For an additional illustration, we will consider here some psycholinguistic evidence about

how traces are processed online by hearers

Chains of Fillers and Gaps

aka moved elements and

traces

• The idea above is that the “who” functions as

a kind of place-holder:

– The man who John was talking to _ left.

• In this particular case, the idea is that the who,

which is associated with the man, must be

understood as the object of talking to

• Another way of investigating this hypothesis

involves priming; in the following slides, I

summarize an experiment by Swinney et al

(1988)

Background: Lexical Access

• When we hear the sound form of a word like

cat (or see it represented in spelling) we

activate this lexical item (word); this is called Lexical Access

• A number of factors determine how quickly Lexical Access will occur for any particular word

– Length

– Frequency of the word

– Etc.

• One factor that influences lexical access is called

Priming

• Priming is the facilitation of lexical access under

certain circumstances, accessing a word is faster than it is in others

• Example: consider lexical access for word 2:

Word 1 Word 2

Situation 1: cat dog

Situation 2: hat dog

• In situation 1, access of dog is speeded up

because semantically-related cat is processed first (we could say that cat primes the access of dog)

Back to traces

• What does priming have to do with traces? Consider the following example:

The policeman saw the boy who the crowd

accused _ of the crime

• In this example, the NP the boy is understood

as the object of accused

• This is because of movement in the relative

clause, where who moves to the front and

leaves a trace

An Experiment: Predictions

• Predictions of the model with traces:

– Meaning of boy should be active when it is first

processed

– This activation should decline over the following part of

the sentence

– The item boy should be re-activated at the position of

the trace, because that is where it is understood

• The experiment uses

– A design in which subjects are listening to sentences like the one above

– At the point of the trace, the subjects are presented with a word visually, which they have to pronounce aloud; this is enough to see if there is priming or not

• Situation 1: Basic Result

– The word girl is presented at the position of the trace

– Boy and girl show a priming effect independently

because they are related

indicating re-activation of boy at the trace position

• Situation 2: In order to confirm the above

– Other nouns in the sentence (policeman, crowd) were

tested at the trace position

– The results showed that these nouns were not

activated at the trace position

• Movement is required for cases in which

constituents appear in positions that they are not normally associated with

• The theory posits that movement leaves a

trace in the original position, an object that

relates to the moved element

• Substantial research questions concern what

moves where, how far, etc

• Some experimental results suggest reactivation

of moved elements at trace positions

• Syntax is the codebook that translates

meanings into structures and then backwards