#syntax

marauderssnowfight:

I just find this extremely hilarious

This is Chomsky’s formulation of the Strong Minimalist Thesis, i.e. the working hypothesis underlying the Minimalist Program.

Language = the narrow syntax, i.e. the computational system that builds structure using items from the lexicon. Structure is built using simple, yet powerful, operations.

The narrow syntax builds the structure and then the structure goes off to other systems with which the narrow syntax shares an interface. These other systems (of which Chomsky assumes there are two, one semantic, the other to do with production (speech or signs etc.)) are systems in their own right. This means they can only ‘see’ and deal with certain things. Therefore, the narrow syntax must produce something that an interface system can ‘read’. Since there are two interface systems, the narrow syntax must produce structures which are legible to both interface systems. The interface systems are different and so require different ‘legibility conditions’ to be met. The narrow syntax thus faces a problem of how to satisfy these conditions simultaneously. The hypothesis being followed in the Minimalist Program is that the narrow syntax that we have is an optimal solution to this problem – it meets the conditions of the interface systems in (one of) the best possible ways.

The Strong Minimalist Thesis is not a doctrine – it is a working hypothesis. It’s a bit like the assumption that natural phenomena can be modelled by mathematics – you assume an ideal, see how far the natural phenomenon matches the ideal, identify the areas where it does and does not, then return for more hypothesising. By using the Strong Minimalist Thesis as a working hypothesis linguists (of course this only applies to linguists who make the same assumptions as Chomsky) can try to establish:

(1)  The ‘legibility conditions’ of the interface systems.

(2)  The extent to which the narrow syntax does meet these conditions in some ‘optimal’ way.

(3)  The extent to which the narrow syntax does NOT meet these conditions in some ‘optimal’ way.

(4)  Reasons for why language may be optimal/sub-optimal.

Hopefully that has shed some light on what is at first glance…and second, third, fourth glances etc…a pretty obscure little sentence.

From a project handout (Bazalgette 2012):

Given the following context

“John is trapped in a room made of cheese on top of a mountain, and can signal for help only by eating the walls of the room such that a message is formed that can be seen from afar.”

What do you think of the following sentence?

“John ate that he needed help.”

allyourcollegiategrief:

When people study language typology they study the ways in which languages vary. However, it’s more than just saying different languages use different words or these languages use very similar sounds. We study the ways in which structural features of languages differ (or are similar) and many go further asking questions about what the limits of linguistic structural variation are.

English speakers will know that in a simple transitive clause we start with the subject followed by the verb followed by the object, e.g. ‘Bob (S = subject) likes (V = verb) pizza (O = object)’, i.e. English has typically SVO word order. But are there other ways of arranging such a structure? Logically there are six ways: SVO, SOV, VSO, VOS, OSV, OVS. The next question that a typologist will ask is how are languages distributed across these possibilities. As a null hypothesis we might think that we would expect to find roughly equal numbers of languages in each group, but this is not what we find at all. SVO and SOV account for around 85% of all languages (with SOV being a bit more frequent than SVO). Adding VSO languages brings the total to around 95% of all languages. The question is: why is the distribution of languages so skewed?

Three broad types of answers suggest themselves as candidates (at least to my mind):

1)     It could be down to chance – the distribution of languages today may represent a highly skewed sample. If we came back in 1,000 years we might see a completely different distribution. This approach is obviously not taken by language typologists. There is certainly something interesting about the distribution which demands an explanation. To write the pattern off as due to chance would be to miss potentially significant insights into the ways languages are structured and shaped.

2)     The formal aspects of human language (perhaps as encoded by Universal Grammar) constrain the surface forms that human languages can inevitably take, i.e. variation is not limitless though it may be apparently vast.

3)     The functional pressures that act on speakers and hearers every time they use language will affect which forms languages will prefer to take, i.e. structures that are easier to say and to comprehend will be preferred and so will come to dominate amongst the languages of the world.

Given the great success of generative linguistics in the past few decades, (2) is a very popular approach to take. However, many intuitively feel that the approach in (3) is ultimately more satisfactory as an explanation. Personally I’m inclined to think that if we can explain surface variation in terms of performance preferences, this is a good thing because it means there is less for the formal approach to account for. Furthermore formal aspects of language are most often thought to be all-or-nothing affairs. If a grammar rules out a particular structure, that structure cannot exist, whereas if performance factors disfavour a particular structure, that structure will be either non-existent or rare.

But are (2) and (3) incompatible? You might think so given the distinction that’s often made between competence and performance. Many would not consider performance factors as relating to language proper – it is extra-linguistic and not something the linguist should be looking at. But the fact is that all the (overt) language that we use to construct theories of both competence and performance is being ‘performed’ in some way (either spoken or written or signed). I think there may well be limits on variation set by formal properties of human languages (which will account for some of the totally unattested structures) but others will be set by performance. And then maybe others that are to do with physics and biology more generally (here I’m thinking more of phonological typological patterns).

For now then it may be useful to adopt either (2) or (3) as an approach to language typology with the aim of seeing how far they can go, but always with the ultimate aim of putting the two together in the end for a more comprehensive account of why languages are the way they are.

In the most recent versions of Chomskyan theory, Merge plays a central (if not the central) role. It is the only structure building operation available in the language faculty. This differs from earlier versions where Move was considered to be a separate structure building operation but Move has since been reconceived as a different type of Merge.

The Minimalist Program has reduced the architecture of the language faculty to the bare essentials (referred to as the ‘(virtually) conceptually necessary’ components). This means that there is a lexicon, a structure building computational system and (at least) two ‘interfaces’ with other cognitive systems (one semantic, the other phonological, broadly speaking). Items are selected from the lexicon and copied into the Numeration if they are to be used to construct a sentence. The Numeration is like a holding bay.

Merge, the structure building operation, takes two items and forms a set, i.e. X and Y merge to form {X,Y} (the theory also involves labelling the set but I’ll ignore that bit). Now, when I said above ‘a different type of Merge’ I did not mean that the operation itself varies, rather the difference between the types of Merge lies in where X and Y come from. There are three possibilities.

1)     X and Y both come directly from the Numeration.

2)     Either X or Y but not both comes directly from the Numeration.

3)     Neither X nor Y come directly from the Numeration.

Option (1) is the type of Merge that gets structure building started. Without (1) there would be no structure.

Option (2) is the type of Merge called External Merge (EM) because one of the merging items is from the Numeration, i.e. comes from somewhere external to the structure that has already been built. Option (2) allows the structure built by option (1) to be extended by merging further items to already existing structure.

Option (3) is the type of Merge called Internal Merge (IM) and this is the current conception of movement. When an item moves, it is going from one place in the structure to another so the items that are merging both come from somewhere internal to the structure that has already been built.

Note that this assumes there is only one monolithic Numeration. If we wanted to merge two existing structures, we would have to add to the options above or modify our assumptions about the nature of the Numeration.

I haven’t written anything for this blog for ages, but this is something I wrote for another one…

English has a lot of relatives. I don’t mean languages to which it is related, but rather relative clauses. I’m only going to focus here on some so-called restrictive relative clauses. An example is given in (1) (the relative clause is in bold).

(1)        The wolf that ate grandma was in bed.

In (1), the relative clause helps us to identify which wolf we are referring to, i.e. out of all the wolves in context, we are referring to the one that ate grandma. In other words, the relative clause in (1) restricts the referent of the noun modified by the relative clause, in this case wolf.

There are quite a few types of relative clause which can be used to restrict the referent of a noun. Some of them look quite similar to one another but they behave in slightly different ways as we will see.

First of all, there are relative clauses introduced by relative pronouns (whoorwhich) and those introduced by that. Let’s call them wh-relatives and that-relatives respectively.

(2)        a.         The wolf that ate grandma was in bed.

           b.         The wolf which ate grandma was in bed.

The noun modified by a wh-relative or a that-relative can correspond to a number of different positions inside the relative clause. In (2), for example, the noun wolf corresponds to the subject of ate. However, it could correspond to the object, like in (3), or the object of a preposition, like in (4), as well.

(3)        a.         The wolf that we saw was in bed.

           b.         The wolf which we saw was in bed.

(4)        a.         The wolf that Red Riding Hood talked to was in bed.

           b.         The wolf which Red Riding Hood talked to was in bed.

           c.         The wolf to which Red Riding Hood talked was in bed.

Some people would say (4b) is not correct because it has a stranded preposition, and that (4c) is the correct version. However, we are interested in what English speakers actually do, not what some people think they should do. Interestingly, if we use a that-relative, like in (4a), we have no choice but to strand the preposition! (5) is not even acceptable to English grammar pedants! (* means unacceptable/ungrammatical).

(5)        *The wolf to that Red Riding Hood talked was in bed.

English also has restrictive relative clauses introduced by neither a relative pronoun nor that. Let’s call these zero-relatives because there is nothing (zero) visible/audible to introduce them. The noun modified by a zero-relative can correspond to an object or the object of a preposition in a relative clause. Some examples are given in (6).

(6)        a.         The wolf we saw was in bed.

           b.         The wolf Red Riding Hood talked to was in bed.

So far, zero-relatives look just like wh-relatives and that-relatives except that the relative pronoun or that is missing. However, there is another difference. We saw in (2) that the noun modified by a wh-relative or a that-relative can correspond to the subject of the relative clause. However, this is not possible when the noun is modified by a zero-relative.

(7)        *The wolf ate grandma was in bed.

In (7), the intended meaning is the one where wolf corresponds to the subject of ate. However, (7) is unacceptable/ungrammatical. To express this meaning, we would need to use a wh-relative or a that-relative instead.

We have seen that a noun modified by a zero-relative cannot correspond to the subject of a relative clause. There are other restrictive relative clauses where the modified noun can only correspond to the subject. These are the so-called reduced relatives.

(8)        a.         The wolf eating grandma has such big ears, eyes and teeth.

           b.         The person eaten by the wolf was grandma.

They are called reduced because they seem to be reduced versions of wh-relatives or that-relatives.

(9)        a.         The wolf which/that is eating grandma has such big ears,     eyes and teeth.

           b.         The person who/that was eaten by the wolf was grandma.

However, various pieces of evidence suggest that the examples in (8) are not the results of bits of (9) being deleted. For example, there are acceptable reduced relatives with no acceptable ‘full’ counterpart. Therefore, reduced relatives are not literally reductions of full relatives.

(10)      a.         The creature resembling grandma is a wolf.

           b.         *The creature which/that is resembling grandma is a wolf.

Reduced relatives in English are formed using the participle forms of the verb: either the present participle, e.g. eating in (8a), or the passive participle, e.g. eaten in (8b). Even though the passive participle looks like the past participle in English, the evidence tells us that reduced relatives can be formed using the passive participle, but not the past participle.

(11)      a.         The wolf has eaten grandma.

           b.         *The wolf eaten grandma is in bed.

In (11a), eaten is a past participle (not a passive participle). If reduced relatives were formed using the past participle and if the noun modified by a reduced relative can only correspond to the subject of the relative clause, we would expect (11b) to be acceptable. However, it isn’t. This, among other things, tells us that it is the passive participle that is used to form this type of reduced relative.

There is a lot more to say, and we haven’t even mentioned all the types of relative clause that English has to offer! But that must wait for later. If I say anymore at present, I fear you might start to envy grandma.

(No grandmas were harmed in the writing of this blogpost… well, one was eaten, but the rest are fine)

This is something I wrote for CamLangSci:

What is the that-trace effect?

In English, the subordinating conjunction that is often optional.

(1)        You think that John kissed Mary.

(2)        You think John kissed Mary.

(1) and (2) are both acceptable sentences in English: that is present in (1) but absent in (2).

When we ask a question about an element inside the subordinate clause, that usually remains optional, as in (3) and (4). Note how who(m) appears in sentence-initial position. However, we still intuitively feel that, in this particular example, it is the direct object of kissed. Since direct objects in English follow the relevant verb (Maryfollowskissed in (1) and (2)), we can capture this intuition by putting a trace of who(m), represented as t_who(m), in the position just after kissed.

(3)        Who(m) do you think that John kissed t_who(m)?

(4)        Who(m) do you think John kissed t_who(m)?

However, there are instances when that is not optional. When we ask a question about the subject of the subordinate clause (corresponding to John in all the examples so far), that must be absent (* means that the sentence is unacceptable).

(5)        *Who do you think that t_who kissed Mary?

(6)        Who do you think t_who kissed Mary?

The unacceptable configuration involves that followed immediately by a trace, hence this effect is called the that-trace effect (Perlmutter, 1968).

Why is the that-trace effect interesting?

Thethat-trace effect is interesting in a number of respects, but I’ll just mention two of them. The first is the question of how we, as English speakers, come to ‘know’ that there is a contrast between (5) and (6) given that that is generally optional as we saw in (1) and (2), and (3) and (4). Unless you’ve studied syntax, you’ve probably never been explicitly taught that there exists a that-trace effect in English at all. So how do we learn such an effect? Phillips (2013) looks at how frequent examples like (3-6) are in a corpus of speech directed at children. This is what he found (Phillips, 2013: 144):

(7)      a.         Who do you think that John met __?              2 / 11,308

           b.         Who do you think John met __?                     159 / 11,308

           c.         *Who do you think that __ left?                        0 / 11,308

           d.         Who do you think __ left?                                13 / 11,308

The corpus contains 11,308 examples of wh-questions (i.e. questions involving the wh-phraseswho, what, etc.). Out of the 11,308 examples, there were no examples of the form in (7c), i.e. cases where the subject of the subordinate clause is questioned. This is the configuration that English speakers judge unacceptable. What is particularly interesting is (7a). Out of the 11,308 examples, there were only two tokens where that is present and the direct object of the subordinate clause has been questioned. Yet speakers judge such sentences as acceptable. If examples like (7a) are so rare, why don’t speakers hypothesise that (7c) just happens to be very rare as well? Alternatively, given how rare it is to find thatinwh-questions, why don’t speakers hypothesise that that is generally impossible in wh-questions? Either way, it is quite difficult to see how the contrast between (5) and (6) (or (7c) and (7d)) can be acquired purely from child-directed speech. We thus hypothesise that there is something about the way the syntax (of English) works that allows us to ‘know’ about the that-trace effect. This is a classic argument based on the poverty of the stimulus.

The second point of interest comes from the fact that English has a that-trace effect as well as an anti-that-trace effect. The anti-that-trace effect can be seen in relative clauses. In English, we can form relative clauses using that. In general, that is optional in relative clauses just as it is in (1-4) above (we use traces again and the relative clause is in boldface).

(8)        The woman that John kissed t_woman is called Mary.

(9)        The woman John kissed t_womanis called Mary.

In (8) and (9) we have relativised a direct object; woman is interpreted as the direct object of kissed inside the relative clause.

Now, if we relativise a subject, that is no longer optional. In such cases, that is obligatory.

(10)      The man thatt_mankissed Mary is called John.

(11)      *The man t_man kissed Mary is called John.

Once again there is something special about the relationship between that and the subject of the subordinate clause. However, the effect in (10) and (11) is the exact opposite of the that-trace effect seen in (5) and (6)! As seen in (5), that immediately follow by a trace is unacceptable; that must be absent, as in (6). In (10) and (11), the situation is reversed. As seen in (10), that immediately followed by a trace is acceptable; the absence of that results in unacceptability, as in (11). We thus call the effect in (10) and (11), the anti-that-trace effect.

The problem for us, then, is that there is something about the syntax of English that allows us to ‘know’ that the that-trace effect exists, but which also allows the existence of its opposite, the anti-that-trace effect. The challenge, which I am working on at the moment, is to find out what that something is!

References

Perlmutter, D. M. (1968). Deep and surface structure constraints in syntax. Doctoral dissertation, MIT.

Phillips, C. (2013). On the nature of island constraints II: Language learning and innateness. In J. Sprouse & N. Hornstein (Eds.), Experimental Syntax and Island Effects (pp. 132–157). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

I wrote this for the CamLangSci blog last month… I have been working on reconstruction in relative clauses quite a bit recently, so this represents one way of desaturating my brain. That is not to imply that it is a tedious topic – far from it. Reconstruction effects in relative clauses give us a fascinating clue about how these constructions are built and how our interpretive faculties ‘read’ such structures. I have tried to avoid technicalities and jargon as much as possible, and to keep this blog entry a reasonable length whilst also getting to the core of some very deep questions in current syntactic theory. So, let’s get started.

We’ll start by considering the following data (if two elements have the same subscript, it means that the two elements refer to the same individual; if the subscripts are different, the elements refer to different individuals. The * means that the sentence is ungrammatical).

(1)        a.         Sam_x likes the picture of himself_x.

            b.         *Sam_x likes the picture of him_x.

            c.         Sam_x thinks that Rosie likes the picture of him_x.

In (1a), himself must refer to Sam. In (1b), him must not refer to Sam but must refer to some other singular male individual (some speakers find (1b) acceptable (Reinhart & Reuland 1993), but I and most other people I have asked do not). (1c) is ambiguous: him can either refer to Sam (as shown by the subscripts) or to some other singular male individual. The pattern in (1) is traditionally captured by the Binding Conditions (Conditions A and B to be more precise) (Chomsky, 1981). The Binding Conditions are quite technical so I won’t go into them here. What is important is the pattern in (1).

What happens if we relativise picture of X, i.e. modify picture of X with a relative clause?

(2)        a.         The picture of himself_x that Sam_x likes is quite flattering.

            b.         ^?/*The picture of him_x that Sam_x likes is quite flattering.

            c.         The picture of him_x that Sam_x thinks that Rosie likes is quite flattering.

As we can see, the pattern in (2) is exactly the same as in (1). This suggests that we are interpreting the head of the relative clause, i.e. picture of himself, in the object position of like, since then (2) can be interpreted in the same way as (1). This in turn suggests that the head of the relative clause originated inside the relative clause and was moved to the position in which it is pronounced. However, when it comes to interpreting (rather than pronouncing) the structure, we ‘reconstruct’ the movement and interpret the head of the relative clause in its original position (see Bianchi, 1999; Kayne, 1994; Schachter, 1973; Vergnaud, 1974). For example, (2a) is interpreted as (3), where the bold copy is the one being interpreted. Note that this bold copy is not pronounced.

(3)        The picture of himself_x that Sam_xlikes(the)picture of himself_xis quite flattering.

The bold the is in brackets because technically the determiner the does not reconstruct with the head of the relative clause picture of himself (Bianchi, 2000; Cinque, 2013; Kayne, 1994; Williamson, 1987 on the so-called indefiniteness effect on the copy internal to the relative clause). Reconstruction thus captures the similarities between (1) and (2) in a straightforward way.

In (2), the head of the relative clause served as the subject of the main clause. What happens when it serves as the direct object of the main clause?

(4)        a.         *Mrs. Cotton_y hates the picture of himself_x that Sam_xlikes.

            b.         ^?/*Mrs. Cotton_y hates the picture of him_x that Sam_xlikes.

            c.         Mrs. Cotton_y hates the picture of him_x that Sam_x thinks that Rosie likes.

If the head of the relative is picture of him, the pattern is the same as in (1) and (2), which suggests that reconstruction has taken place. However, (4a) is ungrammatical for all the speakers that I have asked (this result is highly significant given what is usually said in the literature). This result is unexpected, especially if reconstruction is available in (4b) and (4c). If reconstruction were available, picture of himself should be able to reconstruct to the direct object position of likes inside the relative clause where it could co-refer with Sam, just like in (3). However, the only interpretation available in (4a) is the ungrammatical one where himself is trying to co-refer with Mrs. Cotton suggesting that reconstruction is impossible.

The difference between (4a) and (2a) lies in whether there is an element in the main clause that himself could get its reference from. In (2a), there is no such element, so picture of himself is forced to reconstruct so that himself gets a reference. In (4a), there is an element, albeit an unsuitable one. This suggests that the Binding Condition which allows himself to get its reference from another element applies blindly/automatically: himself gets bound to Mrs. Cotton automatically, which prevents reconstruction occurring. Later on, when it is time to interpret the binding relation, we discover that we were wrong to have bound himselftoMrs. Cotton, but by this time it is too late to perform reconstruction. This suggests that interpretation of syntactic structure only happens after all syntactic operations have finished. If it didn’t, we might expect that we could repair the mistake in (4a) by reconstruction. However, this is not what we find.

The same effect is also found in other constructions. Based on Browning (1987: 162-165), Brody (1995: 92) shows that (5) is acceptable suggesting that picture of himself has reconstructed to the direct object position of buy (the example is slightly adapted).

(5)        This picture of himself_x is easy to make John_xbuy.

However, reconstruction is blocked if there is a potential element that himself could get its reference from, even if it turns out later to be unsuitable (Brody, 1995: 92).

(6)        *Mary_y expected those pictures of himself_x to be easy to make John_xbuy.

            We have only touched the surface on reconstruction in relative clauses here (there are more reconstruction effects and more subtleties that I have been working on but which would take too long to lay out here). What we have concluded is that reconstruction is generally available in relative clauses (at least in English). This tells us that relative clauses are constructed with a copy of the head of the relative clause inside the relative clause itself. The problem is how to choose which copies to interpret. It seems that there are structural conditions which force certain copies to be interpreted, i.e. the choice is not completely free. Explaining what these conditions are can thus provide a fascinating clue about how the human mind works (and how it doesn’t).

            If you’re keen to find out more, Sportiche (2006) gives a good overview of reconstruction effects and Fox (2000) develops a nice account of how interpretation interacts with syntactic structure.

References

Bianchi, V. (1999). Consequences of Antisymmetry: Headed Relative Clauses. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter.

Bianchi, V. (2000). The raising analysis of relative clauses: a reply to Borsley. Linguistic Inquiry,31(1), 123–140.

Brody, M. (1995). Lexico-Logical Form: A Radically Minimalist Theory. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Browning, M. (1987). Null Operator Constructions. PhD dissertation, MIT.

Chomsky, N. (1981). Lectures on Government and Binding. Dordrecht: Foris.

Cinque, G. (2013). Typological Studies: Word Order and Relative Clauses. New York/London: Routledge.

Fox, D. (2000). Economy and Semantic Interpretation. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Kayne, R. S. (1994). The Antisymmetry of Syntax. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Schachter, P. (1973). Focus and relativization. Language,49(1), 19–46.

Sportiche, D. (2006). Reconstruction, Binding, and Scope. In M. Everaert & H. van Riemsdijk (Eds.), The Blackwell Companion to Syntax. Volume IV (pp. 35–93). Oxford: Blackwell.

Vergnaud, J.-R. (1974). French relative clauses. Doctoral dissertation, MIT.

Williamson, J. S. (1987). An Indefiniteness Restriction for Relative Clauses in Lakhota. In E. J. Reuland & A. G. B. ter Meulen (Eds.), The Representation of (In)definiteness (pp. 168–190). Cambridge, MA.

I wrote this for another blog - essentially trying to introduce and work through some of the motivations for certain analyses of relative clauses without too much jargon…

Introduction

            My research focuses on the syntax of relative clauses. A typical relative clause is a type of subordinate sentence which modifies a noun. For example,

(1)        a.         the book that I’m reading

            b.         that blog post you’ve written

            c.         the man who saw me

            d.         a type of subordinate sentence which modifies a noun

The clause in bold is traditionally called the relative clause. They are theoretically interesting for a number of reasons. Some syntactic ones are: they are optional, i.e. nouns do not require a relative clause; the noun being modified seems to play a role in both the main clause and the relative clause; relative clauses resemble other constructions to a greater or lesser extent, e.g. interrogatives, possessives, etc.

The head of the relative

            One of the major debates in the syntax of relative clauses lies in where we say the noun being modified originates in the syntactic structure (I will call this noun the relative head from now on). Consider the following example:

(2)        You wrote the book that I’m reading.

Intuitively the relative head ‘book’ is the direct object of the main clause verb ‘write’. We also understand that ‘book’ is the direct object of the relative clause verb ‘read’. How can it be two things at once?

            One option is to say that ‘book’ is base-generated, i.e. enters the syntactic structure, as the direct object of ‘write’ and is co-indexed with a relative pronoun in the relative clause (if two items are co-indexed, it basically means they refer to the same thing). This relative pronoun may be ‘who’, ‘which’ or silent (or ‘that’ depending on your analysis). Adopting the silent option and symbolising this silent pronoun as REL.PRO (for ‘relative pronoun’), the sentence in (2) would have the structure in (3) (the relative clause is placed in square brackets and the co-indexing is symbolised by the subscript ‘_i’).

(3)        You wrote the book_i[REL.PRO_i that I’m reading]

But how does this capture the idea that ‘book’ is also the direct object of ‘read’? For this we say that the REL.PRO has moved from the direct object position of ‘read’ to the left edge of the relative clause. This gives the structure in (4).

(4)        You wrote the book_i[REL.PRO_i that I’m reading REL.PRO_i]

This captures our intuitions about how ‘book’ relates to the main clause and the relative clause. This is the sort of analysis found in Chomsky (1977) and Sauerland (2003), for example.

            Another option would be to abandon co-indexing and say that ‘book’ is base-generated as the direct object of ‘read’. Instead of having a silent REL.PRO move to the left edge of the relative clause, the head of the relative itself moves (I use a subscript ‘₁’ to symbolise that the two occurrences of ‘book’ are two copies of a single item rather than two independent items).

(5)        You wrote the [book₁ that I’m reading book₁]

We would then say that the copy of ‘book’ in the direct object position of ‘read’ is not pronounced but is nonetheless present in the structure since we are able to interpret ‘book’ as being the direct object of ‘read’. The copy at the left edge of the relative clause is pronounced, giving the sentence in (2). This is the sort of analysis found in Kayne (1994).

The head, the ‘the’ and the relative clause

            The type of relative clause we have been looking at is called a restrictive relative because it restricts the possible denotation of the noun. For example, (6) means that you wrote something and that something is a book AND that something is being read by me. In other words, the direct object of ‘write’ has to satisfy both the condition of being a book and being something that I’m reading. It allows you to distinguish this book from one that I’m not reading.

(6)        You wrote the book that I’m reading.

To capture this, we say that the head of the relative and the relative clause are in the scope of the determiner ‘the’.

(7)        [the [book that I’m reading]]

This can be capture in the syntactic structure by saying that [book that I’m reading] forms a constituent which excludes the determiner ‘the’. Now we have an interesting problem: ‘the’ appears with nouns, not clauses, which might suggest the following structure.

(8)        [the [book [that I’m reading]]]

In this structure, ‘the’ requires a noun and so selects ‘book’. The relative clause modifies ‘book’ and so attaches to ‘book’. But there is evidence suggesting that the presence of ‘the’ is tied to the presence of the relative clause (a * means that the sentence is ungrammatical).

(9)        a.         London is beautiful.

            b.         *The London is beautiful.

            c.         The London that I remember is beautiful.

            d.         *London that I remember is beautiful.

A proper name, for example, ‘London’, cannot ordinarily appear with ‘the’ (hence the difference between (9a) and (9b)). However, when a proper name is modified by a relative clause, ‘the’ must appear (hence the difference between (9c) and (9d)). This suggests that ‘the’ requires the relative clause and not the noun! The following structure captures this idea (see Kayne, 1994).

(10)      [the [[book] that I’m reading]]

Now, we have to come up with a way of relating ‘the’ to the head of the relative ‘book’, unless we want to abandon the idea that ‘the’ typically appears with nouns (an idea which might not be as crazy as it sounds). We could say that ‘the’ and ‘book’, by virtue of being close enough to each other in some non-technical sense, can enter into a relationship. Note that ‘book’ does not have a determiner of any kind. This is unusual in English.

(11)      a.         *I like book.

            b.         *Book is good.

We could therefore say that ‘book’ has an empty position for a determiner (I’ll call it D) that enters into a relationship with ‘the’ (see Bianchi, 2000).

(12)      [the [[D book] that I’m reading]]

            We can now make a prediction: if some other element occupies this D position, ‘the’ cannot form the required relationship and the sentence will be ungrammatical. A preposed genitive competes with ‘the’ in English, as seen in (13).

(13)      a.         the book

            b.         Bob’s book

            c.         *the Bob’s book

Now, if a preposed genitive occupies the D position that ‘the’ is aiming to form a relationship with, there will be trouble because ‘the’ and a preposed genitive cannot both be related to this same position, as seen in (13c). If ‘Bob’s’ is present, ‘the’ cannot be, but if ‘the’ is absent, the relative clause must be absent too. This accounts for why (14) is ungrammatical.

(14)      *You wrote Bob’s book that I’m reading.

The only way to say what (14) intends to say is not to prepose the genitive, as in (15).

(15)      You wrote the book of Bob’s that I’m reading.

Since ‘Bob’s’ no longer occupies D, ‘the’ is free to form a relationship with D and the sentence is grammatical.

Conclusion

            That concludes this introduction to the syntax of relative clauses. We have seen that relative clauses are complex and have quite a counter-intuitive structure once we delve into the systematic patterns of grammaticality and ungrammaticality manifested in English. But that is the way of things – language is a part of the natural world and, just as theoretical physics is dumbfounding us with discoveries into the weird and wonderful nature of the physical universe, so too can theoretical linguistics make discoveries about the underlying structures of our linguistic universe (and all that without a Large Hadron Collider … for now).

References

Bianchi, V. (2000). The raising analysis of relative clauses: a reply to Borsley. Linguistic Inquiry,31(1), 123–140.

Chomsky, N. (1977). On Wh-Movement. In P. Culicover, T. Wasow, & A. Akmajian (Eds.), Formal Syntax (pp. 71–132). New York: Academic Press.

Kayne, R. S. (1994). The Antisymmetry of Syntax. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Sauerland, U. (2003). Unpronounced heads in relative clauses. In K. Schwabe & S. Winkler (Eds.), The Interfaces: Deriving and interpreting omitted structures (pp. 205–226). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

la-linguistique:

It sounds simple enough, but let me warn you: if it’s easy to understand the rule, it’s complicated to apply it. It’s already hard enough for an English speaker to refer to a thing by him or her, yet it is even harder to use c'est + a person. It sounds in English like you are saying it’s + person… very very bad… You need to train a lot on this concept before it becomes natural to you.

A – To Avoid Mistakes -

In English, you say “He is a friend. He is charming.” So you use He is + noun (a friend) as well as He is + adjective (charming). Well, in French, we use 2 different constructions.

• Il/elle est + adjective qualificative (plural ils/elles sont)
  Il est grand. Elle est blonde. Ils sont amusants.
  

• C’est + (article, adjective possessive or demonstrative…) + NOUN
  C’est un ami. C’est mon mari. C’est cette voiture. Ce sont mes cousins.

(or C’est mes cousins… should be “ce sont + plural” – but we use c’est + plural a lot in spoken French although it’s a mistake…).

Adverbs (très, un peu, incroyablement…) don’t “count”. Dismiss them and look for the word that comes after: Do you have a noun? If so, use “c’est”.

Examples (The nouns are in bold):

1. Le Père Noël: c’est un hommegentil. 
2. Il est très gros. 
3. Il est incroyablement généreux. 
4. C’est un personnagemagique. 
5. Les Jackson 5: Ils sont célèbres. 
6. Ce sont des chanteurs. 
7. Ils sont mignons et talentueux.
   

Look for the articles (un, une, du, de la, de l’, des, le, la, l’, les) If you have an article, it’s going to be followed by a noun. So don’t say “Il est un/Elle est une / Il sont des etc…”. Say “C’est un,C’est une” with a strong liaison, “Ce sont des” etc…. (But watch out for the adverb “un peu”: for that one you’d say “Il est un peu timide” for example…

Now, the construction “Il est un…” is not wrong. But it’s now used only in formal French, so much so that it now sounds “wrong” in spoken French. And it cannot be used in all situations. In other words, it’s quite complicated, and forums go on and on about “c’est ≠ il est” because French people don’t seem to agree either :-) If you use my explanation, you won’t make mistake. It might not be the big picture, but it’s practical.

Now, some particular cases…

B – Particular Cases - 

1 - Adjectives That Come Before The Noun

As you know, some adjectives come before the noun; grand, petit, joli, jeune, vrai, bon, mauvais…So what should you do when you have a sentence with one of these adjectives? Well, you have to see if the adjective is followed by a noun, or if it is alone. If there is a noun, use C’est.

• C’est une belle voiture. Elle est belle.
  

2 – Nouns Of Profession, Nationality, Religion

Nouns of profession, nationality, religion… can be used as adjectives – only if there is no other adjective describing it.

So, when it is used as an adjective, use Il/Elle est:

• .Il est français. Il est medecin. Elle est juive.
  

But you can also use it as a noun. In this case it needs an companion word (article, possessive or demonstrative adjectives….)

• C’est un Français. C’est un medecin. C’est une juive.
  

Now, if you wanted to say “He is an intelligent Frenchman”, Frenchman cannot be an adjective because you have another adjective there. You have only one possibility ; “C’est un Français intelligent.” You cannot say “Il est français intelligent…”

3 – C’est + Adjective Masculine Singular

To make a live comment, react to something, share your experience, we use the construction c’est + adjective masculine singular. It’s your emotion that comes through, not a specific description.

• C’est beau ! C’est bon ! C’est chaud !
  

Watch out that the adjective cannot be in another gender/number ; “C’est belle.” is not possible, even if you are looking at “la mer” (the sea). The construction demands a masculine singular adjective.

This construction is also use to make comments about something as a category:

• La mer, c’est beau!

I am not talking about one sea or ocean in particular, but all the seas in the world. So, let’s imagine some scenarios:

You are talking about the Mediterranée : you could say. “Comme elle est belle, la mer Méditerranée. Elle est bleue, elle est transparente. C’est vraiment une belle mer.”

You are standing in front of the bay of Cassis, and are overwhelmed by the beauty of the landscape. You say “Woah… c’est beau!!” – it’s your emotion speaking, you are talking about the sea but also the light, the rocks, the feeling you are having. Kind of “how gorgeous” in English.

So now, let’s have some examples.

C – Examples -

1. Voici mon ami Pierre. C’est un homme charmant (c’est + noun). 
   
2. Il est grand et brun (il est + adj).
   
3. Il n’est pas marié (il est + adj). 
   
4. C’est un bon musicien (c’est + noun).
   
5. Il n’est pas riche, mais il est passionné (il est + adj). 
   
6. C’est un rêveur (c’est + noun)
   
7. Il est un peu timide (il est + adj), mais c’est un bon copain (c’est + noun).
   

This is my friend Peter. He is a charming man. He is tall and has brown hair. He is not married. He is a good musician. He is not rich, but he is passionate. He is a dreamer, he is a bit shy, but he is a good friend.

Live situation:

• C: Comment sont vos tartes ? 
• How are your pies?
• S: Ce sont des tartes faites maison (c’est + noun). 
• They’re home made pies.
• S: Elles sont riches et copieuses (il est + adj). 
• They are rich and copious. 
• C: Est-ce qu’elles sont chères (il est + adj) ? 
• Are they expensive?
• S: Non, elles ne sont pas chères (il est + adj). 
• No, they’re not expensive.
• C: Les tartes, c’est bon ! (c’est + category = adj masculine singular)
• Pies are tasty!
• S: Oui, et nos tartes, elles sont vraiment délicieuses (il est + adj). 
• Yes, and our pies, they are really delicious.
  

La mer est bleue. Elle est verte. Elle est violette. Elle est noire (il est + adj). C’est un élément changeant (c’est + noun) C’est toujours beau (c’est + category = adj masculine singular), la mer. Mais la mer des Iles grecques, elle est particulièrement belle (il est + adj) = The sea is blue. It is green. It is violet. It is black. It’s a changing element. The sea, it’s always beautiful. But the sea of the Greek islands, it’s particularly gorgeous.

linguisten:

blood-and-vitriol:

notallwugs:

Two scientists walk into a bar:

“I’ll have an H2O.”

“I’ll have an H2O, too.”

The bartender gives them both water because he is able to distinguish the boundary tones that dictate the grammatical function of homonyms in coda position as well as pragmatic context.

Q. Two linguists walk into a bar. Which was the specialist in contextually-indicated deixis and anaphoric reference resolution strategies?

A. The other one.

Two syntacticians walk into a’

punkpuppydragon:

cindysuke:

ernmark:

Just learned about garden path sentences.

They’re basically a literary prank– the sentence starts out in such a way that you think you know where it’s going, but the way it ends completely changes the meaning while still being a complete and logical sentence. Usually it deals with double meanings, or with words that can be multiple parts of speech, like nouns and verbs or nouns and adjectives.

So we get gems like

• The old man the boat. (The old people are manning the boat)
• The complex houses married and single soldiers and their families. (The apartment complex is home to both married and single soldiers, plus their families)
• The prime number few. (People who are excellent are few in number.)
• The cotton clothing is usually made of grows in Mississipi. (The cotton thatclothing is made of)
• The man who hunts ducks out on weekends. (As in he ducks out of his responsibilities)
• We painted the wall with cracks. (The cracked wall is the one that was pained.)

truly a strange language

Thanks I hate it