Instructor: Adriana Todea

atodea@yahoo.com

Office hours: Friday 2-3 p.m., Alpha Centre room

Cours 6 Page 1

Introduction to Generative Grammar Course 6: D-structure. S-structure. Movement

WEEK 8 Outline1

Sound, Syntax and Meaning

The sounds are the external face of language –the physical form of speech –but they have no meaning in themselves, they are the interface

with the world. “Apple” means nothing to a Romanian speaker; “măr” means nothing to an English speaker.

The meanings are the internal face of language, its contact with the mind, with cognition: they are abstract mental representations with no physical form. The issue in linguistics is finding the relationship between

external sounds and internal meanings.

How do we match sounds to meanings? GG answer: by a computational system called Universal Grammar (UG), that is, the bridge between phonetic representations and semantic

representations is syntax.

The computational system: --must describe the actual sounds/ their

sequence/ stress patterns/ the intonation (Phonetic Form PF) --must describe what the sentence actually

means (Logical Form LF) --must describe the syntactic devices that connects them (Syntax)

LF interfaces between Syntax and Semantics. PF interfaces between Syntax and Phonetics.

“PF and LF constitute the interface between language and other cognitive systems, yielding direct representations of sound on the one hand and

meanings on the other as language and other systems interact…” (N. Chomsky)

!!!LF is not Semantics. It only refers to the part of semantic representations which are determined by syntactic structures. LF is in between Syntax and Semantics!

Syntax is multistratal: layers or levels of syntax.

1 You find in this outline the content of the slides that I project during the course,

which contain the main topics and also structures and diagrams which may be difficult

and time consuming for you to copy during my lecture. They are made available to you

before class to save time and to make note-taking easier, but not unnecessary!

The outline as such (without your notes covering the detailed explanations that I give

during the course) cannot constitute a sufficient source of information when preparing for the exam. If you miss the class, it is strongly recommended that this outline be used

as a guide to the bibliography indicated at the end of this document.

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The Faculty of Letters is here. –affirmative The Faculty of Letters is where? –interrogative (echo question)

Where is the Faculty of Letters? –interrogative D(deep)-structure (all elements are in their original location, where they

were generated according to the Projection Principle. Predicates assign theta-roles to their arguments and adjuncts according to Theta-criterion)

movement S(surface)-structure (the result of some elements having been moved)

The bridging level between sound and meanings is S-structure.

D-structure (X-bar projection, theta-role assignment)

PF ----------S-structure ----------LF

S-structure is the point of interaction among all these three fundamental

levels. D-structure is related to S-structure by movement. S-structure indicates the original location of the elements using traces. Traces are

generated by the interaction at S-structure of all three levels: D-structure, LF and PF.

The principle of Movement: : the movement operation is an invariant principle of computation, stating that a category can be moved to a target position.

Restrictions: categories can be moved only to certain locations, and not

moved more than a certain distance. is tightly constrained.

NOTE: The term “movement” can be misleading as it conveys the idea that something actually moves from one place to another. Instead chains

are being created between the “moved” element and its trace. Movement of an element always leaves a trace and, in the simplest

element and t is its trace.

Subject-movement Subject-movement involves the specifier of a VP moving to the specifier of IP. It is a spec-to-spec movement.

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Verb-movement When the Inflection is a syntactic morpheme:

a) do-support: dummy “do” is introduced under the I node to provide a root for the inflectional morpheme;

b) verb movement: head-to-head movement from V to I to provide a root for the inflectional morpheme.

Verb-movement

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Irregular verbs:

Interrogatives in English: Affirmative: Miss Marple will write her letters in the garden in the afternoon.

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Yes/No question: Will Miss Marple write her letters in the garden in the

afternoon? The interrogative feature “triggers” IC head-to-head movement, as the

C position is vacant

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The interrogative

* Could you tell me/ I asked him whether will Miss Marple write her letters in the garden in the afternoon?/.

is ungrammatical because “whether” occupies the coplementizer (C) position, and, therefore, the C position is not vacant for the inflection

“will” to move to.

WH-movement: The abstract interrogative feature “triggers” both wh-movement and

head-to-head movement in English.

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Miss Marple will write what in the garden in the afternoon? What will Miss Marple write in the garden in the afternoon?

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Miss Marple will write her letters where in the afternoon? Where will Miss Marple write her letters in the afternoon?

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Miss Marple will write her letters in the garden when? When will Miss Marple write her letters in the garden?

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Wh-movement in relative clauses: [NPThe student [CPwho [IPthe examiner failed___]]] was Tom.

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[NPThe student [CPthat [IPthe examiner failed___]]] was Tom

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The sentence *The student who that the examiner failed was Tom.

is ungrammatical because of The Doubly Filled COMP Filter: “The C-

system may not contain both an overt wh-element and an overt complementizer.”

The Doubly Filled COMP Filter is not universal (Dutch, for example, allows both a wh-word under spec-CP and a complementizer at the same time.

Therefore, The Doubly Filled COMP Filter is not a principle, but a parameter of UG.

Bibliography: Vivian Cook & Mark Newson (1996) Chomsky’s Universal Grammar,

second edition, Blackwell, pp 189-215 (you can find it in the Generative Grammar dossier at the library)