LING 388: Language and Computers Sandiway Fong Lecture 19

Last Time We made the following changes to g17.pl: – fixed the subject relative clause agreement case: the rats that eat/*eats the cheese the rat that *eat/eats the cheese – added passives, and handled the subject-verb agreement: the sandwiches *was/were eaten the sandwich was/*were eaten

g18.pl Empty NP rule: % Person and Number features determined elsewhere empty_np(np(0)) --> []. Subject relative rules: subjrel_s(s(NP,VP),Number,Person) --> empty_np(NP), vp(VP,Tag), {check(Person,Number,Tag)}. subjrel_sbar(sbar(C,S),Number,Person) --> complementizer(C), subjrel_s(S,Number,Person). np(np(np(DT,NN),SBAR),Person,Number) --> dt(DT,Number), nn(NN,Number,Person), subjrel_sbar(SBAR,Number,Person).

Subject relative construction Person:3 Number:plural subjrel_sbar subjrel_s

g18.pl SBAR and S rules:

g18.pl VP and passive auxiliary be rules:

g18.pl NP rules:

g18.pl Lexicon:

g18.pl Lexicon:

g18.pl Subject-Verb agreement: Person, Number and Verb Inflection

English Progressives English auxiliary verb system – progressive auxiliary verb be requires following verb to have the progressive ending (vbg, -ing) 1. John was/*were eating the sandwich 2. *John was eats the sandwich 3. *John was eat the sandwich 4. *John was ate the sandwich 5. *John was eaten the sandwich

English Progressive + Passive In English: – be progressive + be passive – but not be passive + be progressive Examples: – The sandwich was being eaten – *The sandwich was been eating