Linguistics 322

Exercises

Week 5

Exercise 5:

• Open up Grammar 4a.

Generate the following verb (voice) phrases:

 

1. eaten a banana
2. see the sky
3. write those three letters
4. visiten several friends
5. taken a lot of bottles

Note that the grammar will only generate the above phrases which are intermediate. It will not generate a complete sentence until we cover some more rules. the form *"visiten" is the only form G4a can generate until we get a lexicon. The lexicon covers irregular allomorphs. Once established, it will be able to generate "visited".

 

• Draw a tree diagram showing the derivation of "eaten one watermelon" indicating agreement, filling NIL features. Be sure to include any links that may occur. Draw each step indicating which rule has been applied.

Open up two files and read them:

• Feature copying: T to V.
  • This page starts with T. I now consider this poor pedagogy, because the closest operator to V is Vc (voice). I haven't rewritten this. But the basic principles and rules hold. The feature is copied to the verb. In this case the feature [+Pass], which needs a host, is copied to the verb.
• Verbal operator: tense and aspect.
  • This talks about these two operators. Voice follows. in Tense, Aspect, and Voice.

This page updated 4 OC 99.