Lecture 3: Functional Phrases Syntax Lecture 3: Functional Phrases

The independence of syntax and semantics Two famous sentences: Colourless green ideas sleep furiously The child seems sleeping The first is grammatical, but ill formed semantically The second has a well formed meaning, but is ungrammatical

What is semantically important is not necessarily syntactically important Q: Is a VP a VERB phrase because the verb carries the important meaning?: ‘flew to Paris’ is more about ‘flying’ than it is about ‘Paris’ or ‘to’ A: No!: ‘is tall’ ‘tall’ is more important than ‘is’ But this is still a VP

Syntax determines syntactic phenomena A VP is a VERB phrase, because the verb is the syntactic head (not necessarily semantic head) The King flew to Paris, allegedly The King is tall, allegedly

The Nominal Phrase What is the head of the phrase: ‘that table’? The usual reaction is: ‘table’ But Only because ‘table’ carries more meaning than ‘that’ This is not a good reason

Pronouns are determiners Recall Most determiners can be used as pronouns That table is white – that is white Some tables are green – some are green Some pronouns can be used as determiners We humanitarians But pronouns replace nominal phrases They have the same distribution as them: My friend is rich – he is rich Everyone likes my friend – Everyone likes him So pronouns are nominal phrases = a one word phrase containing just a head

The one word phrase The head determines the nature of the phrase

If a pronoun is a determiner, then this phrase is a DP

If this is a DP, then all nominal phrases are DPs The Determiner is the head The NP is the complement Headed by the Noun

DPs without determiners Expressions like John and people have the same distribution as pronouns: John likes Mary – he likes Mary We spoke to people – we spoke to them So they are also DPs But they don’t contain determiners But they have properties that determiners provide: A man / the man = indefinite / definite people / John = indefinite / definite There is a man / * the man in the room There are people / is John in the room

Phonologically empty Ds

Sentences What is the head of a sentence? The gardener will mow the lawn Only sentences distribute like sentences There are no one word sentences So it is difficult to identify a single word as the head on these grounds There may be other ways to do it

Types of sentences Some sentences are finite: They can contain a tense or a modal auxiliary: The gardener mowed the lawn The gardener may mow the lawn They have nominative pronoun subjects: He mowed/may mow the lawn * Him mowed/may mow the lawn They may or may not be embedded I think the gardener mowed the lawn

Types of sentences Some sentences are non-finite: * They contain to: (I expect) The gardener to mow the lawn They have accusative pronoun subjects: I expect him to mow the lawn * I expect he to mow the lawn They must be embedded I expect the gardener to mow the lawn *

Types of sentences Sentences contain one: Tense, or Modal, or Infinitival ‘to’ They cannot have combinations of these: * the gardener will mows the lawn * the gardener will to mow the lawn * the gardener to mowed the lawn These things are in complementary distribution So they belong to the same category We call the category Inflection (I) This is the functional verbal category [+F, -N, +V]

The type of sentence is determined by what Inflection it contains The gardener will mow the lawn The gardener mowed the lawn The gardener to mow the lawn The head determines the nature of the phrase So this is evidence that the Inflection is the head of the clause Finite Non-finite

Clauses are IPs The head is the Inflection So the clause is IP The specifier is the subject The complement is the VP

Comparing DP and IP

What about the specifier of the DP? A phrase which precedes a noun is the possessor: [DP The gardener’s] lawnmower The possessor is related to the subject: The police observed the criminals The police’s observation of the criminals This suggests that the possessor is the specifier of the DP

A DP with a specifier

Final comparison