Linguistics 322

Exercises

Week 4

Exercise 4:

Draw a tree diagram showing the derivation of the subjectless phrases below indicating agreement, filling NIL features. Be sure to include any links (government) that may occur, and include voice:

1. bought the book (passive)
2. eat the pears (active)
3. eaten little rice
4. proved these ten theorems (active)

For the first sentence, indicate in a list each rule that you have applied to get from the underlying L(ogical)-structure.

Computer grammar

Open the file Grammar 5 NEW MAC or Grammar 5 NEW DOS in the Cgram downloader file. For the first attempt at the grammar, we will do some simple NPs. Generate the following NPs:

• the two books
• three pears
• some rice
• the books.

Turrns the results in.

A brief description how to use the grammar is given in Course Description on the 322 homepage. What you should be focussing on is the lexicon. It is important to get the feature listed for each lexeme correctly. If not, things will break down at some point--not necessarily on the first run. Since this is your first run, it is best to enter the lexical items first, then run the grammar. You will be building up your lexicon. Be sure not to destroy it.

Good luck!

Example of answer.

heard the song. (passive: the song was heard)

Logical from (from conceptual structure)

• First, links are established between each governor and its governee. The links aren't shown above because the program won't permit it. They should be in your diagrams, however.
• Let us arbitrarily start with NP. The noun needs a value for plural since it is marked [-Pt_Inh]. [-Pl] is copied via the link from Qu 'ONE' to N.
• Agreement and count should check positive for agreement.
• [+Def] is copied to ONE because it is marked [-Def_Inh], since it needs a value for definiteness.
• VP: (HEAR is marked with the feature [-Nom] Case, which is transferred to the noun. (I said today you can skip Case this time only.)
• [+Pass] needs a verbal host. [+Pass] is copied to the V, which is an appropriate host.
• In the last step, Vce.,[+Pass] is [NULL] (no host), and HEAR+[+Pass] ==> hear+d = 'heard'.
• The [+Def, -Dem] is spelled out as 'the'.
• ONE is spelled out as [NULL] since it is [-Def] (and unemphatic).
• SONG is spelled out as 'song' since it is singular [-Pl].

This page updated 5 OC 2000.