arguments

the participants minimally involved in an action defined by the predicate. The complements and the subject, the latter also called an external argument.

clause

a structure containing a (visible or invisible) subject and a predicate.

experiencer

one of the thematic or theta-roles where the argument experiences some physical or mental state, like Mary in Mary was afraid of dogs. The experiencer theta-role is assigned in the specifier position of vP, similarly to the agent role. If both an agent and an experiencer argument are selected by the verb there are two vPs projected and the experiencer occupies the specifier position of the lower vP.

grammar

(a) a (finite) set of rules which tell us how to recognise the infinite number of expressions that constitute the language that we speak. (b) a linguistic hypothesis about these rules.

interrogative clause

a structure mainly used to ask for information, either in the form of a yes–no question or a wh-question.

movement

S-structure constituents do not always appear in the position where they are base-generated in D-structure, they often move from their base positions to other structural positions. There can be various reasons motivating movement, see wh-movement and DP-movement.

object

a DP complement immediately following the verb. It can move to the subject position in passive sentences. See also direct object, indirect object.

object position

the specifier position of VP.

phrase

a group of words that can undergo syntactic operations (e.g. movement) as a unit.

pronoun

a DP that usually refers to another DP, but contains only the grammatical features (number, person, gender) of it (I, you, he, she, etc.). Its interpretation depends on linguistic factors or the situation. Within the DP pronouns occupy the D head position, as they cannot be modified by determiners even on very special readings (as opposed to grammaticality of the John I met yesterday)

semantics

the study of meaning. It covers both lexical meaning and the meaning of sentences with special emphasis on their truth conditions (under what circumstances a sentence is true/false).

specifier position

a position defined by X-bar Theory. The specifier is sister to X', daughter of XP. It is a phrasal position, the nature of the phrase depends on what it is the specifier of. E.g. the specifier of IP is the subject, the specifier of DP is the possessor in possessive structures.

theme

one of the thematic roles where the argument is not affected by the action described by the verb e.g. in Peter saw John nothing directly happens to John as a result of being seen. In terms of the UTAH the theme theta-role is assigned to the specifier position of the VP.

there-construction: see existential there-construction.

transitive verb

a verb with a nominal complement, e.g. read, buy. The agentive subject occupies the specifier position of vP, the theme object occupies the specifier position of VP.

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Basic English Syntax with Exercises

3.2 Theoretical Aspects of Movement

Consider a sentence such as the following:

(46)who does Harry hate?

The verb hate typically has two arguments, experiencer and theme, and is transitive with the theme as its object:

(47)Harry hates him

But in (46) the object appears to be missing. This is not a case of an ‘understood’ object, where the argument is present at a semantic level, as it is fairly obvious that the interrogative pronoun who has the grammatical function of the object. Yet, this pronoun is not sitting in the canonical object position, the complement of the verb, directly after it. Indeed, the interrogative pronoun is occupying a position that no other object can occupy:

(48)*him does Harry hate

The obvious questions to ask are: why is the object sitting at the front of the sentence in (46)?; and how is the interrogative pronoun interpreted as an object when it is not sitting in an object position? As to the first question the obvious answer is that it has something to do with the interrogative nature of the clause: the clause is a question and interrogative clauses of this kind start with an interrogative phrase such as who.

The second question is a little more difficult to answer. In English, an element typically is interpreted as object depending on the position it occupies:

(49)aHarry hates him
bHe hates Harry

In (49a), the pronoun him is interpreted as the object as it is sitting in the complement position. Harry on the other hand is the subject and is sitting in a specifier position. In (49b) it is the other way round: He is the subject, sitting in the specifier position, and Harry is the object, sitting in the complement position. If who in (46) is interpreted as object, we should expect it to occupy the object position. The grammar that we will be adopting in this book assumes that this is exactly the case: the interrogative pronoun does indeed sit in the object position at some level of description of this sentence. However, at another level of description, the interrogative pronoun is in another position, one at the beginning of the clause. The assumption then is that this element undergoes a movement which takes it from the object position into the sentence initial position.

Movement processes turn out to be a central aspect of grammar in many languages and we will see many instances of it in this book. In this section we will introduce the main theoretical considerations relating to movement processes and which play a role in the description of virtually all English sentences.

 

 

        3.2.1 Move α

        3.2.2 D-structure and S-structure

                 3.2.2.1 D-structure and Theta Theory

                 3.2.2.2 S-structure and Case Theory

        3.2.3 Traces

        3.2.4 Locality Restrictions on movement

 

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