Suggested answer for Exercise 6
| (1) | a | The diamonds were stolen yesterday. |
| b | Will you meet Mary in Paris? | |
| c | Linguistic textbooks, I never read. | |
| d | I won’t trust you. | |
| e | Who does John like? | |
| f | Never have I been treated so rudely. |
In sentence (1a) the DP the diamonds is the theme argument of the verb steal. It is a passive sentence in which the theme argument moves to the canonical subject position, as it cannot get case in its base position. The common wisdom about passivisation is that the past participial form of the verb cannot assign thematic role to its agent argument and cannot assign accusative case to its theme argument. As the Spec,IP position of the sentence is empty, the theme argument can move there to get nominative case. Movement of DPs to Spec,IP to get nominative case is called DP movement. DP movement is substitution as it targets an existing position, in this case, Spec,IP. The initial structure is in (2a), while the derived structure is in (2b).
| (2) | a | were stolen | the diamonds | yesterday | |
| b | The diamondsi | were stolen | ti | yesterday |
In sentence (1b) a yes–no question is under scrutiny. In yes–no questions in English main clauses the auxiliary precedes the subject. The auxiliary is a head and its base position is in I as is shown in the declarative version of the sentence in (3a). In questions the auxiliary verb moves from I to C to mark C as interrogative, the way we get the interrogative interpretation of the sentence as in (3b). The movement is head-movement and it is substitution as the auxiliary moves to an existing position, to C, which is empty before the movement of the auxiliary.
| (3) | a | you | will | meet Mary in Paris | |
| b | willi | you |
ti | meet Mary in Paris |
In sentence (1c) the verb read is an active transitive verb that has a theme complement. In the initial position the theme argument must be in VP as theta role assignment is performed by the main verb in a very local domain (within the projection of the verb) as in (4a). But the theme DP moves to the front of the sentence (4b). This movement is called Topicalisation and it is an adjunction operation as we can have several topicalised constituents.
| (4) | a | I never read | Linguistic textbooks | |
| b | Linguistic textbooksi | I never read | ti |
In sentence (1d) the negative marker is unified with the modal auxiliary in I. As is seen in (5a) the canonical position for the negative head follows I, the D(eep)-structure position of the modal auxiliary. In English negation can be adjoined to the auxiliary in I as in (5b). This movement is adjunction as it is adjoined to a position that is already filled with the modal auxiliary.
| (5) | a | I will | not | trust you |
| b | I won’ti | ti | trust you |
Sentence (1e) is an interrogative sentence in which the theme argument of the verb like is an interrogative pronoun. Interrogative pronouns in English tend to move to the front of the sentence followed by the movement of the (first) auxiliary to C. As the pronoun is the complement DP of the verb, in D-structure it has to be in VP (6a). But being an interrogative pronoun it has to move to the most initial position in the sentence (6b) to mark the sentence interrogative. This is a substitution operation as interrogative pronouns move to an existing empty position (to Spec,CP). The movement of the auxiliary backs up this movement from I to C in accordance with the Structure Preserving Principle.
| (6) | a | John | -s | like | who | ||
| b | Whoj | doesi | John | ti | like | ti |
That the movement of the interrogative pronoun is substitution is further supported by the fact that in English only one interrogative pronoun can occur in sentence-initial position, as the contrast between (7a) and (7b) illustrates.
| (7) | a | Who saw what? |
| b | *Who what saw? |
Sentence (1f) contains both negative fronting and passivisation. The negative word never moves to iP from its adverbial base position, which is a position adjoined to vP. The auxiliary have that has been inserted in the topmost vP, the tense vP to spport the bound tense morpheme (remember, the thematic verb cannot move from the passive vP, English is not an agglutinating language where the same verb form can “collect” several inflectional endings) moves to I first and then to C. The subject, which is understood as the theme of the verb treat moves from the specifier position of VP to Spec,IP where it can be assigned Case. Finally, the the thematic verb itself moves from V to v to support the bound passive morpheme.