Linguistics Assignment 2 Page Finish In 6 Hours

LING111: Assignment Three To be turned in at the beginning of class on Friday, April 26nd

GRAMMAR WARM-UP 1. Write out the phrase structure rules of our current grammar (as it stands at the end

of class, on Friday, April 19th). 2. Show the structure that the current grammar assigns to (1):



 (1) The beatnik drinks coffee from Nicaragua in the smokey cafe.

Think carefully about what (1) means. Draw a tree for (1) in which you use no adjunction rules. Then draw a second tree, in which you allow yourself to use adjunction rules. According to the syntax/semantics correspondence hypotheses we have developed in class, which structure best reflects the meaning of (1)? Justify your answer carefully.

EXTEND THE CURRENT GRAMMAR GUIDELINES TO KEEP IN MIND:

Our current grammar does not account for the fact that sentences like those in (2) are grammatical. Say why this is so. Your answer may be brief, but it must be precise and explicit.

(2) a. The professor’s ideas shocked the students. b. The old professor’s ideas shocked the students.1

The task in this assignment is to consider and evaluate two possible ways of revising our rule for NP so as to generate the sentences in (2). The possible revisions differ in various ways but one feature that they both share is that they make an assumption about the possessive marker ’s that might seem initially strange. This element is conventionally thought of as being part of the word with which it is written (that is, professor’s in (2) is conventionally taken to consist of a single word). This assumption is false, and both revisions we will consider here correctly treat possessive ’s as a word- like element in its own right, listed in the lexicon as belonging to the lexical category POSS. Though this may seem strange at first, we will shortly consider some of the evidence which suggests that this is in fact the correct view.

For the present, though, the important point to remember is that possessive s functions basically as a word and that the task of saying where and when it occurs is essentially the same as the task of saying where and when the Determiner the or the Determiner a occurs. Specifically, the task of making sure that s occurs in the right

Substitute ‘handsome’ or ‘dashing’ if you find that more plausible.1

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position boils down to the task of making sure that the syntactic category POSS occurs in the right positions.

Candidate Revision One

We could revise our analysis of NP to allow N to be preceded by an optional possessor noun. Let’s say that this noun-plus-possessor sequence is positioned after D and AP. If possessor nouns are represented by an N followed by Poss, then the revised rule for NP will look like this:

(3) NP → (D) (AP) (N POSS) N (PP)

Candidate Revision Two

We could revise NP to allow N to be preceded by an optional possessor Noun Phrase. One way of doing this is to assume that the first position within the NP is not occupied by D, but rather by a Determiner Phrase (DP), as shown in the revised rule:

(4) NP → (DP) (AP) N (PP) We assume that DP consists of either a D alone, or else a possessor Noun Phrase, where possessor noun phrases are represented by the category NP followed by the category Poss.

(5) DP → { }

Represent the revisions

What structure does Revision One assign to the NP the old professor’s ideas? What structure does Revision Two assign to that NP? Draw the trees with care and discuss as appropriate.

Evaluation

A The following sentence can be used to show that one of the two proposals presented above is superior to the other.

(6) The man and the woman’s relationship was intense.

Say which proposed revision the example (6) suggests is correct. Explain in detail why it favors one proposal over the other.

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D NP POSS

B The following sentences can also be used to construct an argument for one proposed revision over the other:

(7) a. The old professor’s son’s ideas shocked the students. b. John’s uncle’s party’s slogans shocked the students.

What characteristic property of natural language structures is exhibited by the examples in (7)? Which proposal do the observations in (7) favor? Say why as carefully and as explicitly as you can.

C Consider the following example:

(8) The lawyer and the judge’s secretary fled to Mendocino.

(8) is ambiguous [surprise!]. Explicate the ambiguity. Can (8) be used to favor one proposal over the other? If so, which does it favor?

D Finally, the sentence in (9) also provides an argument in favor of one of the two proposed revisions. Which one is it? Explain clearly and in detail why it favors the one that it does.

(9) The guy from Oregon’s ukelele is for sale.

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