Resumen Literatura Norteamericana I: Siglos XVII-XIX Working with Syntax Part 2 PDF

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Working with Syntax. A Generative Approach Part 2 Chapter 3: Noun Phrase Structure Chapter 4: Verb Phrase Structure

APUNTES DEL EQUIPO DOCENTE

Mª Ángeles Escobar Álvarez Ricardo Mairal Usón

Departamento de Filologías Extranjeras y sus Lingüísticas

UNED

Chapter 3: Noun Phrase Structure

1. Preliminaries This chapter attempts to provide a comparative study of the syntactic distribution of elements within noun phrases. In the following examples we mark the different constituents that are the topic of study: (1) a. Susan is happy b. There is a red parcel on her desk c. The parcel looks very heavy d. All these parcels are very similar e. This big red parcel on the desk is a surprise f. Birthday parcels are always unexpected g. Susan’s birthday is today Although the examples illustrate different constituents, all of them include the same nucleus: a noun. The other constituents correspond to other category labels, a tentative inventory follows: (2) a. Noun (N)

b. Adjective (A) c. Determiner (D)

proper name: Susan common noun: parcel, desk, surprise, birthday

definite: indefinite:

Demonstrative (Dem) Quantifier

big, red the a this, these All

In order to incorporate all these elements within the nominal phrase, it has been proposed that the nominal projection is dominated by functional projections. According to Abney (1987), the first such projection is a Determiner Phrase (DP) projection. The distribution of the noun with respect to other constituents of the nominal projection within the DP phrase has been interpreted in terms of overt raising of N to D. Consider the following examples: (3) a. La mia casa è bella b. Casa mia è bella c. *La casa mia è bella d. *Casa la mia è bella

Italian

As the examples in (3) illustrate, the common noun “casa” in Italian seems to be in complementary distribution with the definite article in the presence of a postpronominal possessor. The grammaticality of the examples (3a) and (3b) can then be explained by assuming that the common noun occupies the D position in these two cases. Since the D position is not the canonical position of Nouns but of Determiners,

the noun ‘casa” is assumed to move into empty Determiner position from its N position, in these two examples. On the other hand, it has been claimed that languages may differ with respect to the movement of N to D. Consider the English equivalent examples in (4). (4)

a. *The my house is beautiful b. *House mine is beautiful

English

Unlike “casa” in the previous example (3b), the English constituent “house” cannot occupy the same D position in its equivalent example in (4b), although the D position is empty. This shows that there is no similar N to D movement in this language. In fact, the N-to-D movement strategy seems to be a parametrical issue (Longobardi 1994, 1996). 2. Nouns and articles As we have seen before, there is empirical evidence to assume a functional projection above the Noun head. We have assumed that Determiners occupy part of this functional phrase. In fact they occupy the D head position. In the first part, however, we introduced the X’theory without making any reference to particular functional projections. (10)

XP

X’

X’

X

ADJUNCT

COMPLEMENT

In fact we can extend the structure in (10) to noun phrases as in the structure in (11): (11)

NP

SPEC

N’

N’

N

ADJUNCT

COMPLEMENT

In the syntactic structure in (11), the NP is a single endocenctric projection with one unique head: N. According to this phrase structure, Determiners will occupy the SPEC position. However, this analysis cannot account for other examples like those mentioned above, now again in (12), in which there are two constituents preceding the Noun head, as in (12a), or other genitive NPs preceding the noun head, as in (12b): (12) a. All these parcels are very similar b. Susan’s birthday is today Furthermore, if we analysed demonstratives and articles like pure Specifiers, they would be optional elements of the nominal projection. However, it is well known that bare nouns are not always possible, as Alexiadout et al (2007) argue providing the following examples (Alexiadout et al, 2007: 11, p.63): (13) a. *He found cat on doorstep b. *Cat arrived last night The ungrammaticality of the examples in (13) shows that bare nouns cannot occupy thematic positions. In contrast, they can be subjects or objects of verbs or of prepositions provided that they appear together with a definite or indefinite article: (14) a. He found a/the cat on the doorstep b. A/The cat arrived last night Provided these facts, Alexiadout et al (2007) argue that “the presence of an article appears to be indispensable with noun phrases that function as arguments of verbs”. Some apparent counterexamples however exist, as these authors also point out with the following examples (Alexiadout et al, 2007: 12, p.64): (15) a. I am going to get wine and beer for the party b. Topsy hates cheese c. Ilektra bought flowers for Oreste’s party d. Cats are cute creatures Alexiadout et al, 2007 observe that nouns like wine, beer and cheese belong to the subclass of mass nouns, whereas flowers and cats are plural nouns. As an exception, then, both mass nouns and bare plurals can appear in thematic positions without being introduced by an article. The role of the article introducing a singular noun is to denote the existence of that particular noun in the world. In this sense, the article provides a particular referential reading of the noun it introduces. That is there is just one referent for each determiner. Abney (1987:77) claims: “The function of the determiner is to specify the reference of a noun phrase. The noun provides a predicate, and the determiner picks out a particular number of that predicate’s extension. Apparently, the (definite) article enjoys a privileged position among all those elements that constitute the class of determiners, as we shall see shortly. However, the key question is how from this fact, namely the ability of the

article to pass referentiality onto the noun it modifies, the conception of the category DP, as a superordinate category to NP, emerged.”

Abney (1987) puts forward the functional phrase DP as responsible for the referential status of the article. In this view, the article plays both a syntactic and a semantic function and is analyzed as a head that projects its own (functional) category DP.

---EJERCICIOS --3. The DP hypothesis 3.1 An additional functional category The structure for noun phrases most commonly adopted in the generative perspective until the mid 80's assumed the noun (N) to be the head of the Noun Phrase (NP). According to Jackendof (1977) NP was a single (endocentric) projection of N. In this analysis, articles, demonstratives, adjectives and possessive NPs, among other elements, would occupy its leftmost position, as we pointed out above. Adjectives were attached between the determiner and the noun position by a recursive `adjunction' rule which `stretched' the NP to allow an unlimited number of adjectives in the representation of (1) of the NP: "The wet, red, soft, spongy ... ball".1 (1)

NP The

N’ wet

N’ red

N’ soft

N’ spongy

... N’ N

(complement)

ball

1

This example has been extracted from the paper "Introduction to Layers in DP" by

Roberto

Zamparelli,

May

3,

1996

http://www.cogsci.ed.ac.uk/~roberto/layers/dp-hyp.html).

(see

website:

The main reason to make a distinction between the position of all different elements to the left of N was the fact that in English they cannot co-occur provided the ungrammaticality of the following examples (Alexiadou et al, 2007: 46):

(2) a. *John’s the book/ *the John’s book b. *this the book /*the this book c. *the his book/*his the book d. *John’s this book/ *this John’s book

In addition, as has been observed in the literature, the phrase representation in (1) fails to capture the basic X-bar theory axiom which stipulates that all non-head material must be phrasal (Carnie 2007 p. 198-ff). Thus, determiners should be regarded as phrasal categories. According to the DP-hypothesis, the most important element in the noun phrase is not the noun, but the category of articles ("the", "a" in English, "Il/Lo/La/I", "Un/Uno/Una" in Italian, absent in Russian, Chinese and several other languages) and quantifiers ("Every", "Some", "Three", "Many", "Most", etc., present to some extent in all human languages). They can be collectively referred to as determiners. The maximal projection of the determiner, or Determiner Phrase (DP) is the topmost category of the noun phrase; the determiner takes the NP as its complement as in the representation of (3), below: (3)

DP

Spec

D’ D the

NP Spec

N’ N ball

(Complement)

In this new configuration, we have at least three different positions for elements to the left of N. In the following sections we will discuss the linguistic data in English and other languages that support this analysis.

3.2 Articles and Demonstratives Back to Jackendoff (1977), demonstratives and articles were assumed to occupy the same position to the left of N being both part of the same class of “determiners”. However there are semantic and syntactic reasons to assume that they do not belong to the same class of elements and therefore they may occupy different positions.

First of all, we may distinguish between articles and demonstratives according to their semantic interpretation: whereas the former may be definite or indefinite as we saw before. Demonstratives, as Lyons (1999) points out, are always definite:

“A demonstrative signals that the identity of the referent is immediately accessible to the hearer, without the inferencing often involved in interpreting simple definites. This may be because the work of referent identification is being done for the hearer by the speaker., for example by pointing to the referent. The deictic feature typically expressed on a demonstrative plays a similar role to pointing, guiding the hearer’s attention to the referent. this suggests a necessary connection between [+DEM] and [+DET], the former implying the latter. I take demonstratives, then, to be necessary definite”. (Lyons 1999:21).

As for their syntactic distribution, in contrast to what the English data may suggest, provided the example in (2b) above, there is cross-linguistic evidence in favour of the fact that the demonstrative and the determiner do not occupy the same structural position in many languages where both elements may co-occur (Alexiadou et al 2007: 59):

(4)

a. ez

a

haz

this the b. ika this c. afto this

n

(Hungarian)

house anak

(Javenese)

the baby to

vivlio

(Greek)

the book

d omul accesta

(Romanian)

man-the this

Alexiadou et al 2007 also discuss further syntactic facts in English in order to make an additional distinction between demonstratives, on the one hand, and articles, on the other hand. First, there is a similar semantic interpretation between the demonstrative “this” and

the modifier “such” in examples such as the ones provided in (5)

(Alexiadou et al 2007: 63a):

(5)

a. I did not expect this reaction b. I did not expect such a reaction

Moreover, the English demonstrative “that” is also considered a degree modifier, similar to the degree adverb “so”, given the following examples (Alexiadou et al 2007: 64):

(6) a. I did not expect it to happen [AdvP that quickly] b. I did not expect it to happen [AdvP so quickly] c. I did not expect [DP [AP that big] an audience ]] d. I did not expect [DP [AP so big] an audience ]]

In order to account for the differences between the demonstrative and the article one may conclude that they occupy two different positions. Then we may assume that demonstratives occupy the same position as degree modifiers like “such” or “so” in SpecDP, whereas articles like “a” occupy the D position as in Alexiadou et al 2007: 65:

(7)

DP Spec

D’

such

D

this

a

NP Spec

N’

that

N

(Complement)

reaction

In the following sections of this chapter, we will examine the position of the other different elements to the left of the noun illustrated in the examples provided in the introduction: quantifiers, empty determiners, and genitive possessive NPs.

3.3 Quantifiers and Demonstratives Consider the example we already mentioned in the introduction section with a quantifier preceding the demonstrative: All these parcels are very similar Given our analysis so far, we know that demonstratives occupy the SpecDP position, the question we want to address in this section is the exact position for English quantifiers in this type of examples.

In Giusti (1991) there is a specific claim on the syntactic distribution of quantified nominals that has been followed by many linguists in the generative framework. In particular, Giusti argues that quantified nominals correspond to an independent functional category QP.

In this analysis, quantifiers head their own functional

projection on a par with D.

On the assumption that Quantifiers project their own functional category the first question we want to address is whether QP occupies a higher or lower position within the DP. Consider the following examples: All the parcels Susan received The many parcels Susan received

Whereas the quantifier “all” appears to the left of the Determiner in the first example, the quantifier “many” appears to the right of the Determiner in the second example. Each syntactic distribution could be derived from the following two phrase representations: QP Spec

Q’ Q All

DP Spec

D’ D

NP

the

parcels

DP Spec

D’ D

QP

The Spec

Q’ Q many

NP parcels

One could argue that both structures exist in one language provided that the lexicon of this language contains two types of quantifiers that project in a very different fashion. However, as Giusti (1991) argues a more detailed analysis of “many” in an example like “The many parcels Susan received” shows that it is not a quantifier but an adjective and as such it can be analyzed as an adjunct modifier, sister to N’ to the left or to the right. Recall our previous discussion on the difference between complements and adjuncts, only the latter are able to show recursively.

In fact, Giusti (1991) provides two solid arguments to suggest that many/few and numerals can function either as adjectives or as quantifiers and can accordingly appear to the left or to the right of D.

One argument in favour of “many/few” and numerals as adjective phrases in contrast to universal quantifiers like “all/each/every” is based on the following examples illustrating predication, (Giusti 1991, 12-14):

the many/several/twenty/numerous boys I know 

the boys I know are many/several/twenty/numerous

the nice/intelligent boys I know 

the boys I know are nice/intelligent

*The all/ each/every/some boy(s) I know -/->

*the boys I know are all/each/every/some

The second argument in favour of a similar behavior of many/few and numerals with respect to adjectives when they follow a Determiner lies on the following contrast of grammaticality (Giusti 1991, 15): a *I had already met the many you introduced to me last night b *I had already met the nice you introduced to me last night c I have already met many d *I have alredy met nice On the assumption that “many” is a real quantifier when it is not preceded by D explains why it doesn’t behave like an adjective phrase in the examples above.

.

3.4 Proper Names, mass nouns and empty Determiners In this section we aim to provide an analysis for the examples already mentioned in the introduction section containing proper names and mass nouns without determiners: a) Susan is happy b) Birthday parcels are always unexpected The question we want to raise here is whether in the absence of an overt article as in the examples above we have to still assume the presence of D as a required structural position. In order to answer this question we will examine relevant data in English and in other languages with respect to, in the first place, proper names and, in the second place, bare plurals and mass nouns.

Back to the late eighties, generative linguists attempted to provide an analysis of nominal phrases that included an additional functional head responsible for the article (Dobrovie-Sorin, 1987; Grossu, 1988, Taraldsen, 1991; Ritter 1991; Longobardi, 1994, among others). Given the fact that articles usually appear to the left of the noun like in English or Spanish, the proposal was that in languages like Norwegian and Romanian where the head N appears to the left of the enclitic article the N head had moved to the functional head occupied by the article:

a) gutt-en, hus-et

Norwegian

boy-the, house-the b) portretul

Romanian

portrait-the

The process of N-movement onto the functional head occupied by the affix-article can be clearly adopted under the DP-hypothesis as follows:

DP

D’

D

NP

-en N’

N gutt

For Italian, Longobardi (1994) extends the N-To D analysis to account for proper names, on the basis of the following data: a) il mio Gianni the my John b) Gianni mio John my ‘my John’ c) *mio (il) Gianni

In effect, in example a) the article il (`the`) and the proper name Gianni co-occur, the possessive adjective mío (‘my’) intervening between the two. In contrast there is no definite article in example b) and the proper noun Gianni appears to the left of the possessive adjuective mio. Note that an initial possessive adjective is in complementary distribution with N in example c). As we have argued in our previous discussion on adjectives and quantifiers, possessive adjectives are required to appear adjoined to N, not to D. The generalization we can draw from this observation is that in the absence of the article, D is still there but it is not realised phonologically. According to this analysis, the grammatical examples above undergo the following analyses:

a)

DP

D’

D

NP

il AP

N’

mio N’

N Gianni

b)

DP

D’

D

NP

Gianni AP

N’

mio N’

N

As for the analysis of bare nouns, consider the following examples: a) Parcels are welcome presents b) The parcel is a welcome present c) A parcel is a welcome present

In all the English examples above are used generically. However, as has been observed in the literature ( Krifka et al, 1995; Carlson 1977; Alexiadou et al 2007 and all references therein) there is considerable crosslinguistic variation of how genericity is displayed in the nominal system.