Introduction to Contemporary Linguistics October 28, 1998 Syntax 2: relationships between sentences OVERVIEW: 1. Actives and passives 2. Questions and answers 3. Topics and subjects 4. More about Chinese vs. English 5. Summary ============================================================= 1. Actives and passives >Syntax is about the structure of individual sentences, but sometimes you can learn something about that by comparing different sentences. >For example, what are the similarities and differences between the following two sentences? (1) a. The dog bit the man. b. The man was bitten by the dog. >Morphology: (1a) uses the verb form "bit" (1b) uses the verb form "bitten" >Semantics: (1a) is about what the dog did (1b) is about what happened to the man >Syntax: (1a) has the structure NP-V-NP (1b) has the structure NP-was-V-by-NP >Sentence (1a) is active: the syntactic subject plays the semantic role of the active "doer" of the action. >Sentence (1b) is passive: the syntactic subject plays the semantic role of the passive thing that is affected by the action. >Do these related sentences come from the same "deep" structure? DEEP STRUCTURE SURFACE STRUCTURE The dog bit the man ==> The man was bitten by the dog The dog bit the man ==> The dog bit the man >Some linguists think so. They describe such changes with transformations (transformational rules): English passive transformation: NP1-V-NP2 ==> NP2-be-Vpass-(by-NP1) Notes: >The Aux "be" must get proper inflection (is, was, ...) >"Vpass" means that the verb has passive inflection. >The (by-NP1) is optional, so you can leave it out ("The man was bitten.") >Does Mandarin have actives and passives? Of course! (2) 那隻狗咬了那個先生。 (那隻狗 is the active doer) (3) a. 那個先生被那隻狗咬了。 b. 那個先生被咬了。 (那個先生 plays the passive role) Mandarin passive transformation: NP1-V-NP2 ==> NP2-bei-(NP1)-V Notes: >The verb does not have to get any special inflection. >As in English, the (NP1) is optional. 2. Questions and answers >Two other relations that can be described with transformations: >Yes-no questions: the answer should be "yes" or "no". (4) a. Did the dog bite the man? b. Yes, the dog bit the man. >Wh-questions: use special question words, which usually start with "wh" in English (e.g. who, what, how, when, where, why, ...) (5) a. Who did the dog bite? b. The dog bit the man. >English yes-no questions are related to their answers with two transformations: English Do Insertion: NP-VP ==> NP-do-VP English Aux Inversion: NP-Aux-VP ==> Aux-NP-VP Notes: >"Do" is a kind of Aux, so after you insert "do", you can move it with Aux Inversion. >"Do", other things in Aux, and the verb must get the proper inflections (does, did, ...) >Using Do Insertion alone provides emphasis: (6) a. Mary read the chapter for this week. b. Mary did read the chapter for this week! >You can use Aux Inversion alone, if there already is an Aux: (7) a. Mary will read the chapter for next week. b. Will Mary read the chapter for next week? (8) a. The man was bitten by the dog. b. Was the man bitten by the dog? >You can use Do Insertion and Aux Inversion together, though the second step is rarely spoken: (9) a. The dog bit the man. b. (The dog did bite the man.) c. Did the dog bite the man? >How does Mandarin make yes-no questions? There are two major ways: >Add a question particle at the end of the sentence: (10) a. 你喜歡他。 b. 你喜歡他嗎？ >The A-not-A construction. The speaker offers the listener a choice of "A" or "not-A": (11) a. 你喜歡不喜歡他？ b. 你喜不喜歡他？ >The transformational rule for A-not-A is hard to write, since the "A" can be an entire VP, just a V, just one morpheme, or even just one syllable! (11) d. 你hap 不 happy ？ >Wh-questions are more complicated than yes-no questions. >First, they seem to disobey subcategorization. >"hit" MUST have an object in English: (12) a. Mary hit the baseball. b. *Mary hit. >Subcategorization: hit: V, __ NP >But then what is happening here...? (13) a. What did Mary hit __ ? b. *What did John hit the baseball? >Second, what does the phrase-structure tree look like when you have a wh-word? [OVERHEAD] >Third, wh-words can appear in the middle of a sentence, and yet the whole sentence is not a question: (14) John wondered what Mary hit. (15) John likes Mary, who he met at a baseball game. >Fourth, you cannot make wh-questions from every possible sentence: (16) a. John likes Sally. b. Who does John like? c. John likes Mary and Sally. d. *Who does John like Mary and? >How do we solve the mysteries of this transformation, called wh-movement? >One solution for the subcategorization problem is to imagine that the "hole" in a wh-question has an invisible, silent "shadow" of the wh-word that has moved: the trace (t). (13) a. What did Mary hit t ? >The trace is still the object of "hit", but it is empty, just pointing to the real object "what" that has moved to the beginning of the sentence. [OVERHEAD: marking the hole left by wh-movement] >Where does the wh-word move to? To keep the phrase structure as simple as possible, the best idea is to move it outside the S, into a bigger syntactic constituent labelled S' (S-bar, or the complement phrase). >This means that the regular sentence and the wh- question will both contain an ordinary S made of an NP (subject) and VP (predicate): S NP VP V NP Mary hit what ? S' S NP VP NP Aux V NP What did Mary hit t ? >Next, how do wh-words appear in the middle of a sentence? It happens because wh-movement can happen in any S, not just in the "biggest" S of the whole sentence. >Subordinate clauses: wh-movement allows a question to be buried inside a non-question sentence: (14) a. John wonders: [ Mary hit what? ] b. John wonders [ what [ Mary hit t ] ] >Notice that Do Insertion and Aux Inversion do not happen inside subordinate clauses! >Relative clauses: wh-movement acts like "glue" to stick the clause and NP together: (15) a. [NP the nice girl] + [S John likes her] b. [NP the nice girl [S' who [S John likes t ]] ] >There must be a trace inside the relative clause; if you "fill up the hole," then it's ungrammatical: (16) *the nice girl [who [John likes her]] >Finally, why is wh-movement sometimes "illegal"? (17) a. Mary likes ice cream with chocolate. b. What does Mary like ice cream with t ? c. Mary likes ice cream and chocolate. d. *What does Mary like ice cream and t ? (18) a. Mary believes that John likes Bill. b. Who does Mary believe that John likes t ? c. Mary believes the rumor that John likes Bill. d. *Who does Mary believe the rumor that John likes t ? >Such constraints on wh-movement turn out to be much too difficult for this class! >If these constraints are so complex, how can speakers "know" them? How can babies learn them? Can it be that babies are born somehow "knowing" these constraints????? >In short, English has the following transformation: English wh-movement: [S ... wh-XP ...] ==> [S' wh-XP [S ... t ...] ] Notes: >"wh-XP" stands for an NP, PP, AdjP, ..., with a wh-word inside (such as what, what book, in what, when, how pretty, etc) >Wh-movement obeys complex constraints. >Does Mandarin have wh-movement? >First, what are the wh-words in Chinese? 甚麼、哪、在哪裡、為甚麼、怎麼... >Do such words move to the front of the sentence? No! (19) a. 老張打了棒球。 b. 老張打了甚麼？ c. *甚麼老張打了？ (If you think (19c) is OK, I'll explain why soon.) >But what about Chinese relative clauses? (20) Relative clause with an empty object: a. 我最喜歡那個老師。 b. 那個（我最喜歡）的老師 c. *那個（我最喜歡他）的老師 (21) Relative clause with an empty subject: a. 那個老師在教我們。 b. 那個（在教我們）的老師 c. *那個（他在教我們）的老師 >So even though Chinese doesn't have wh-movement, maybe it does have traces in relative clauses: (20) b. 那個（我最喜歡ｔ）的老師 (21) b. 那個（ｔ在教我們）的老師 3. Topics and subjects >Both Mandarin and English have a transformation that is similar to wh-movement, which moves the semantically "most important" NP to the front: Topicalization (topic movement): [S ... NP ...] ==> [S' NP [S ... t ...] ] (22) Linguistics, I really like t . (23) 語言學我很喜歡ｔ。 >Mandarin uses topicalization much more often than English! (24) a. 今天的報紙你看過了嗎？ b. *Today's paper, have you read (it) yet? >Moreover, unlike English, Mandarin can also have topics that are not moved: (25) a. 這門課（，）考試很眾獢C b. *This class, the tests are very easy. >That means that unlike English topics, Chinese topics can be created by an ordinary phrase-structure rule: (E) S' --> NP S [OVERHEAD] 4. More about Chinese vs. English >One way to see that Chinese truly does have grammar is to study the mistakes that Chinese students make when writing or speaking English. >The mistakes are systematic, because the students are following the system of Chinese grammar. >Inflection: Chinese students often make mistakes with inflection because Chinese doesn't have very much inflection: (26) a. *Two girl is read. b. Two girls are reading. >Non-moved topics: Chinese syntax has rule (E), which puts a topic into the basic structure of a sentence, but English does not: (27) a. *This class, the homework is very easy. b. ?As for this class, the homework is very easy. c. (The homework is very easy in this class.) >Pro-drop: Unlike English, Chinese can leave out pronouns. When combined with non-moved topics, this can create very weird sentences in English: (28) a. *Learning must have confidence. b. ?As for learning, you must have confidence. c. (Learning requires confidence.) >What the writer of (28a) was probably thinking: Learning must have confidence [TOPIC] [EMPTY SUBJECT] >Inflection, or topics and pro-drop? (29) a. *New cars must keep inside. b. New cars must be kept inside. [wrong inflection] c. As for new cars, you must keep them inside. [wrong use of topic and pro-drop] >Subcategorization for movement transformations. >Some English adjectives can allow for the movement of an object up into subject position: (30) a. It is difficult to learn English. b. English is difficult to learn t . >This confuses Chinese students, who think that you can move anything up into subject position: (31) a. *I am difficult to learn. b. It is difficult to learn for me. ["for me" is PP, not NP object] >The complex relationship between syntax and semantics in English can also confuse Chinese students: (32) a. *World War III will be happened. b. World War III will happen. >"happen" takes a syntactic subject, but this subject is not a semantic "doer", so some students think that you should use passive inflection. >Here's a good book about English mistakes made by Chinese learners, analyzed with modern linguistic theory: Yip, Virginia (1995) Interlanguage and Learnability: From Chinese to English. John Benjamins. 5. Summary >More of the syntactic comparison between English and Mandarin: [sorry -- this table didn't come out right in this format] English Mandarin wh-movement yes no traces yes yes topic movement yes (uncommon) yes (common) non-moved topics no yes