Linguistics 322

Fall 1998

Exercise No. 7

Exercise I:

Determine the logical form for the following sentence, determine its surface structure, and explain each step: what motivates each step:

1. The piano had been being played by Alice.

As you probably know by now, Red marks the result of apply a rule. Red arrows show government downward, and the blue arrow shows the c-command relation and copying between an antecedent and its tail:

1. establish the government links.

2. determine the labelling of the phrases.

3. Start with passive operator. [+Pass] needs a verbal host. Features are coped to verb.

4. [+Prog] features need a verbal host; but host V is occupied. Insert {BE}

5. [+Perf] features need a verbal host, but host V is occupied. Insert {BE}.

6. [+Past] needs a verb host, but V is occupied. Insert {DO}.

PASSIVE

7. [+Pass] when adjoined to V, causes V to "lift Case"; i.e. it blocks Case assignment.

8. Create a new node NP such that it is joined to TP.

9. The features of the Caseless PIANO are copied up to the new NP.

10. [+Tense] assigns the nominative Case to its right to the new NP. PIANO is saved from ravages of the Case Filter.

11. The features person, gender, and number are copied to T. (verb subject agreement)

12. Meanwhile, ALICE remains Caseless. Insert the dummy P "by", which can assign accusative Case to its governee like any other preposition. ALICE is saved.

SPELL OUT

13. ALICE is spelled out as Alice.

14. PIANO [TRACE] is spelled out as [NULL], because it has no Case.

15. BY i.s.o. as by

16. PLAY+Passive is split into the regular form of stem+suffix; PLAY i.s.o. as play and [+Pass] as '-en'.

17. The next three operators also split into stem plus suffix.

18. [+Prog] i.s.o. as '-ing'.

19. {BE} as be. (twice)

20. [+Perf] i.s.o. '-en', the normal ending for the irregular strong verbs.

21. [+Past] i.s.o. as '-d', an irregular variant of '-ed'.

22. HAVE is spelled out as 'ha-', an irregular form of 'have.'

23. THE PIANO i.s.o. as the piano.

21.

Exercise II:

What is wrong with the following sentences?:

1. *John has eating a potato.

Assuming that the only operator marked plus (besides tense) is [+Prog], the dummy verb closes to [+Prog] must be {BE}.

1. *Mary is had singing a song for an hour.

Assuming that [+Perf] and [+Prog] are the plus features, {HAVE} is selected when closest to [+Perf] and {BE} when closest to [+Prog].

1. *Wrote a letter by Phil.

There is no subject here. If verb is active, then Phil should have been raised (i.e. the features of Phil should have been raised.). (Don't try this one as a malformed passive until we cover the passive properly.)

Sample:

1. Dilbert saw two unicorn with the gooses.

The feature [-Pl] failed to be copied from two to unicorn.

The irregular feature spelling GOOSE+[+Pl] failed to apply permitting the default to rule to apply.

Course Outline L322