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2. Syntax: Advanced Forays – Extensions & Reflexions
Marcel den Dikken
Department of English Linguistics
ELTE

3. Tense & Agreement → SAFE®ty First
• verbs project their internal arguments within VP but need
a ‘little v’ to get their external θ-role and accusative Case
assigned
• ‘little v’ helps us make sense of Burzio’s Generalisation,
according to which verbs which do not assign an external
θ-role cannot assign accusative Case
• distinguishing between unaccusative/ergative and intran-
sitive/unergative verbs in terms of ‘little v’ allows us to
understand the major diagnostics for (un)ergativity
• the functional head Asp(ect) can host participial morphol-
ogy, and is thus an active ingredient in the syntax of the
perfect, the passive, and the progressive
• in this segment, we develop the inflectional structure of
the clause further by looking at Tense and Agreement

4. what is was doing here, and where is it?
SAFE® 3
Tense & Agreement
• the copula be serves as a support morpheme in several
syntactic constructs
the tree was sick
in all of these cases, what follows was is a phrase which cannot by itself serve as the predicate of a tensed clause
the tree was dying
the tree was felled
what is was doing here, and where is it?
the copula is a support morpheme for inflectional morphology: tense and agreement
hypothesis: it is inserted in a functional head associated with tense and/or agreement morphology

5. SAFE® 3
Tense & Agreement
• the copula also shows up in non-finite environments
I don’t want
the tree to be sick
I don’t want
the tree to be dying
I don’t want
the tree to be felled
at first sight, the copula isn’t supporting anything here: to stands on its own, and forms no head-level unit with be (cf. to ever be…)
for English, we can hypothesise that it, too, has an infinitival suffix that needs support – albeit a phonologically null morpheme
but in other Indo-European languages, the infinitive has a suffix (cf. G zu sei-n)

6. SAFE® 3
Tense & Agreement
• the copula also shows up in non-finite environments
I don’t want
the tree to be sick
I don’t want
the tree to be dying
I don’t want
the tree to be felled
at first sight, the copula isn’t supporting anything here: to stands on its own, and forms no head-level unit with be (cf. to ever be…)
for English, we can hypothesise that it, too, has an infinitival suffix that needs support – albeit a phonologically null morpheme
we will treat this (null or overt)
infinitival suffix as a tense
morpheme, and will assign to
tense a functional projection
of its own: T(ense)P

7. Tense & Agreement • the minimal structure of to-infinitival clauses
SAFE® 3
Tense & Agreement
• the minimal structure of to-infinitival clauses
I don’t want
the tree to be sick
I don’t want
the tree to be dying
I don’t want
the tree to be felled IP DP
the tree I′ I to TP T be …

8. SAFE® 3
Tense & Agreement
• splitting up IP is also useful in the syntax of finite clauses
the tree may be sick
the tree may be dying
the tree may be felled IP DP
the tree I′ I
may TP T be …

9. SAFE® 3
Tense & Agreement
• in the absence of a modal, T raises to I and agrees w/ SU
the tree was sick
the tree was dying
the tree was felled IP DP
the tree I′ I TP T
was …

10. this follows if I harbours the Agr-morpheme and T moves up to I
SAFE® 3
Tense & Agreement
• in the absence of a modal, T raises to I and agrees w/ SU
note that agreement is
peripheral to tense in
the inflectional system
ich war müde
du war-st müde
fáradt vol-t-am
fáradt vol-t-ál
the trees were sick
the trees were dying
the trees were felled IP
because in finite clauses it
is the I-node that harbours
agreement, it is sometimes
called an Agr(eement) node DP
the trees I′
this follows if I harbours the Agr-morpheme and T moves up to I I TP T
were …

11. this follows if I harbours the Agr-morpheme and T moves up to I
SAFE® 3
Tense & Agreement
• in the absence of a modal, T raises to I and agrees w/ SU
note that agreement is
peripheral to tense in
the inflectional system
ich war müde
du war-st müde
fáradt vol-t-am
fáradt vol-t-ál
the trees were sick
the trees were dying
the trees were felled IP
Mirror Principle
morphological derivations mirror syntactic derivations DP
the trees I′
this follows if I harbours the Agr-morpheme and T moves up to I I TP T
were …

12. so we need to develop TP further, and have a trace of DP in SpecTP
SAFE® 3
Tense & Agreement
Q how does the subject get to SpecIP?
floating quantifiers are always locally linked to a trace of the subject in a specifier position
the trees may all be sick/dying/felled
a ‘floating quantifier’ (all) linked to
the subject can be placed in be-
tween the modal in I and be in T IP
so we need to develop TP further, and have a trace of DP in SpecTP DP
the trees I′ I
may TP T be …

13. Tense & Agreement Q how does the subject get to SpecIP?
SAFE® 3
Tense & Agreement
Q how does the subject get to SpecIP?
floating quantifiers are always locally linked to a trace of the subject in a specifier position
the trees may all be sick/dying/felled
a ‘floating quantifier’ (all) linked to
the subject can be placed in be-
tween the modal in I and be in T IP
so we need to develop TP further, and have a trace of DP in SpecTP
DPi
the trees I′ I
may TP ti
TP is a well-behaved X-bar projection T be …

14. we will come back to successive cyclicity in a later programme
SAFE® 3
Tense & Agreement
Q how does the subject get to SpecIP?
the trees may all be sick/dying/felled
successive cyclicity
movement of the subject out of T’s
complement via SpecTP to SpecIP
is called successive-cyclic mov’t IP
we will come back to successive cyclicity in a later programme
DPi
the trees I′ I
may TP ti T be …

15. SAFE® Deposits → in this segment, we have seen that:
• the inflectional structure of the clause recognises a
separate X-bar projection for T(ense)
• in infinitival clauses in Germanic, T harbours the infinitival
suffix (-n in German, Dutch, Old English), which, though
phonologically silent in Modern English, still forces the
insertion of support morphemes like the copula under T
• the functional head I continues to project, outside TP, and
in finite clauses hosts either a modal (uniquely finite and
unable to agree with the subject) or subject agreement;
because of its special connection with agreement, I is
sometimes labelled ‘Agr(eement)’ instead
• the subject moves to SpecIP via SpecTP (a case of so-
called successive-cyclic movement), and can ‘float’ a
quantifier in SpecTP on its way up to SpecIP

16. Syntax: Advanced Forays – Extensions & Reflexions
Marcel den Dikken
Department of English Linguistics
ELTE

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