Syntax An Introduction to Minimalism

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 Syntax
An Introduction
to
Minimalism

Elly van Gelderen

John Benjamins Publishing Company

Syntax
Syntax
An Introduction to Minimalism

Elly van Gelderen

Arizona State University

John Benjamins Publishing Company

Amsterdam / Philadelphia
 TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of
8

the American National Standard for Information Sciences – Permanence

of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48-1984.

doi 10.1075/z.214
Cataloging-in-Publication Data available from Library of Congress:
lccn 2017041504 (print) / 2017051536 (e-book)
isbn 978 90 272 1253 5 (Hb) / isbn 978 90 272 1254 2 (Pb)
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© 2017 – John Benjamins B.V.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other
means, without written permission from the publisher.
John Benjamins Publishing Co. · https://benjamins.com
 Table of contents

Abbreviations ix
List of tables xi
List of figures xiii
Preface xv

Chapter 1
Generative Grammar 1
1. Universal Grammar 1
2. Parameters: From syntax to lexicon 5
3. Minimalism 7
4. Conclusion 11

Chapter 2
Building blocks 13
1. Lexical categories 14
2. Grammatical Categories 21
3. Pronouns 27
4. Conclusion 28

Chapter 3
Structure and hierarchy 31
1. Phrases 31
1.1 The Phrase (for lexical categories) 32
1.2 Phrases of functional/grammatical categories 39
1.3 Testing and X′ 41
2. Movement 44
2.1 Yes/No questions 44
2.2 Wh-questions 45
3. Hierarchical structural and c-command 46
4. Grammatical functions 49
5. Conclusion 52
vi Syntax

Chapter 4
The VP 55
1. Verbs and theta-roles 56
2. Subjects start in the VP 59
3. The vP and VP 62
4. Empty elements 68
5. Conclusion 70

Chapter 5
The TP: Tense, mood, and aspect 73
1. What is in the T? 73
2. Tense, grammatical aspect, and mood 76
3. TP Adverb(ial)s 81
4. Movement involving T and the position of the negative 85
5. Conclusion 87

Chapter 6
The CP: Mood and pragmatic roles 91
1. The subordinate C 91
2. Wh-movement 96
3. Topic and focus 100
4. CP adverb(ial)s 103
5. Conclusion 104

Chapter 7
The Determiner Phrase 107
1. The D, DP, Num(ber), and NumP 107
2. Adjectives 109
3. Argument structure in the DP 111
4. N-movement 112
5. Conclusion 114

Chapter 8
Features 117
1. From Universal Grammar to third factor 117
2. Which are the relevant features? 118
3. Where do features come from? 120
4. Features and Affix-hop 122
5. Conclusion 124
 Table of contents vii

Chapter 9
Conclusion 125
1. A Generative model and the clause structure 125
2. Finding your own tree 126
3. Review by chapter and review questions 127
4. Conclusion 128

Bibliography 131

Appendix
Answers to exercises 135

Index of terms and languages 157

 Abbreviations

(not mentioned are (N)P, V(P), P(P), and A(P))

acc accusative nom nominative case
ant anterior npi Negative Polarity Item
asp aspect, also in ASPP, Aspect Phrase Num(P) Number (Phrase)
c(p) Complementizer (Phrase) om Object Marker
ci Conceptional Intentional p plural
(Interface) pass passive
cl Classifier perf perfect(ive), also used in PerfP
coca Corpus of Contemporary American phi person and number
English (http://corpus.byu.edu/ pres present
coca/) pro zero subject of finite verbs
decl declarative PRO zero subject of non-finite verbs
def definite progr progressive, also used in ProgrP
d(p) Determiner (Phrase) q Quantifier
e Event rep repetitive
ecm Exceptional Case Marking s singular or Speech time
f feminine t(p) Tense (Phrase)
fin finite u- uninterpretable feature
freq frequentative vpish VP Internal Subject Hypothesis
fut future 1 first person
gen generic 2 second person
hab habitual 3 third person
i- interpretable feature # pragmatically marked
indef indefinite * ungrammatical
m(p) Mood (Phrase)
 List of tables

Table 2.1 The practical use of a distinction between lexical and grammatical categories 13
Table 2.2 Some differences between N(oun) and V(erb) 17
Table 2.3 Differences between adjectives and adverbs 20
Table 2.4 Some prepositions in English 21
Table 2.5 Determiners 22
Table 2.6 The case of personal and possessive pronouns 23
Table 2.7 Characteristics of auxiliary verbs 25
Table 2.8 Auxiliaries in English 25
Table 2.9 A few complementizers 27

Table 3.1 Finding a phrase 41

Table 3.2 Pronominalization and coordination of phrases 42
Table 3.3 Subject tests (subject is in italics; verb is in bold) 49

Table 4.1 Inner aspect or Aktionsart 58

Table 4.2 Characteristics of unergative and unaccusative verbs 65
Table 4.3 Examples of unergative and unaccusative verbs in English 67

Table 5.1 Dependence of the affix on the auxiliary 79

Table 5.2 Temporal, aspectual, and modal TP adverbs/adverbials 82

Table 6.1 Clausal complements 96

Table 6.2 English Cs for Adverbial clauses 96

Table 8.1 Uninterpretable and interpretable features of airplane and build 118
Table 8.2 Grammatical Features in English, with their possible values 119
 List of figures

Figure 1.1 The Internal Grammar 2

Figure 1.2 Model of language acquisition (initial version) 3
Figure 1.3 Model of language acquisition (final version) 9
Figure 1.4 The Minimalist model of language generation 10
Figure 1.5 “I’m telling on you” 12

Figure 2.1 Parts of speech 14

Figure 2.2. Connecting sentences 26

Figure 3.1 Vegetarian Chickens 34

Figure 3.2 Simplified derivation 52

Figure 4.1 “Cute him out” 71

Figure 5.1 “kinda sorta” 84

Figure 6.1 Degrees of clausal (in)dependence 94

Figure 7.1 The uncle of a … 115

Figure 8.1 “Although” 120

Figure 8.2 Innate as opposed to triggered features 121
 Preface

This is a textbook on generative syntax. It provides general syntactic background as

well as an introduction to ideas from the Minimalist Program, the most recent instan-
tiation of generative syntax. Chapter 1 starts with the general idea behind generative
grammar and should be read from a big picture perspective. Chapters 2 and 3 provide
some background on lexical and grammatical categories and on basic phrase struc-
ture rules. After these introductory chapters, the book covers the clausal spine, the
VP, TP, and CP in Chapters 4, 5, and 6, respectively. Chapter 7 is about the DP and
Chapter 8 discusses the importance of features. Chapter 9 returns to some of the is-
sues raised in Chapter 1 and summarizes the approach.
If students are already familiar with categories, Chapter 2 can be skipped. For
students who want to know about the clausal spine and are less interested in the fine
details of feature checking, Chapter 8 can be left out.
The main goal of the book is to enable students to understand the structure of sen-
tences in English. The framework developed can then also be applied to other languages,
though not much emphasis will be put on that here, except in Chapter 7. The book rep-
resents the structure by means of trees, as is common in generative grammar (although
no longer in Chomsky 2013; 2015). A second aim is to explain the generative model and
some of the recent updates to it, e.g. the shift from a very rich Universal Grammar to
a simpler one. Because much of the material is introductory, I have not given copious
references, except in Chapter 1. The information in Chapters 2 and 3 is mostly couched
in traditional grammatical terminology. In the other chapters, I have only provided ref-
erences to some of the major ideas, e.g. the VPISH, the VP-shell, and the DP.
I decided to write this book because most introductory textbooks lack the basic
information – here included as Chapters 2 and 3 – or are too technical for the stu-
dents I have in mind, e.g. Adger’s 2003 Core Syntax, Hornstein, Nunes & Grohmann’s
2005 Understanding Minimalism, and van Gelderen’s 2013 Clause Structure. Carnie’s
2011 Syntax and Radford’s 2009a–b are alternatives but have different areas of focus
and do not incorporate current Minimalist ideas. I have introduced a few aspects of
the current phase of Minimalism (Chomsky 2015) and present a different view of
theta-roles, namely as based in inner aspect. Adger’s and Radford’s sentences are also
often judged as too British by my students. I have used a mixture of corpus examples
(marked as such) and made-up ones. The corpus examples liven up the text and are
also added if the construction is a little unusual.
xvi Syntax

Chapters 2 and 3 are based on Chapters 2 and 3 in van Gelderen (2010) and
Chapter 4 takes some of the ideas from van Gelderen (2013) but makes the discussion
less theoretically focused. Many thanks to Naomi Danton, Terje Lohndal, Kleanthes
Grohmann, Ad Foolen, and to the students at Arizona State University taking LIN 514
in the spring of 2016 and of 2017 for being so serious and motivated and for helping
me clarify issues.
Elly van Gelderen, Apache Junction, AZ
 Chapter 1

Generative Grammar

Keywords: Universal Grammar, I-language, E-language, parameters (syntactic and

lexical), merge, minimalism, recursion

In this chapter, I provide some background on the major ideas behind generative
grammar and on some of the recent changes in its outlook. Generative Grammar has
always emphasized the innate component to the Faculty of Language. In recent years,
the focus has shifted from a rich Universal Grammar to innate mechanisms that are
part of more general cognitive principles and principles of organic systems.
In Section 1, we’ll look at reasons for assuming a Universal Grammar and in-
nate cognitive structure. In Section 2, we’ll discuss the ‘Principles and Parameters’
approach, an intuitively appealing way to account for cross-linguistic differences.
Section 3 sketches the basics of a Minimalist approach, the Borer-Chomsky Conjecture,
and provides a brief introduction to the ‘Problems of Projection’ approach to phrase/
clause structure. Section 4 is a conclusion.
This chapter provides a broad picture of the aims of generative syntax. Depending
on the reader’s familiarity with this area, certain parts of this chapter may be some-
what (too?) abstract. Chapter 2 starts with the basics syntax and the other chapters
build on that.

1. Universal Grammar

Chomsky’s (1957; 1965) generative model offers an approach to language that is fo-
cused on acquisition and the faculty of language as represented in the mind/brain.
The answer as to how children acquire language so effortlessly is seen as rooted in
Universal Grammar. In this model, the focus is on the mind of the language learner/
user (the competence) and ceases to be on the structures present in the language pro-
duced (the performance). Thus, children do not imitate what they hear but come up
with their own system; see the difficulties this leads to in Figure 1.1.
2 Syntax

Figure 1.1 The Internal Grammar

Baby Blues: © 1997 Baby Blues Partnership Distributed by King Features Syndicate

The input to language learning is poor, a phenomenon known as the ‘poverty of the
stimulus’. Children hear parts of sentences, false starts, and so on, but still end up with
a grammar in their minds/brains that is not dependent on that input or on correction,
as Figure 1.1 also attests to.
Speakers know so much more than what they have evidence for from the input.
For instance, speakers of English have never been taught that sentences of the type in
(1a) are grammatical but those in (1b) are not. Yet, they know this difference.
(1) a. Who did you say that you intend to invite?  (adapted COCA fiction 2014)
b. * Who did you say when you intend to invite?

In (1a), who originates as the object of invite and is fronted to form the wh-question;
in (1b), the same happens but somehow changing that to when makes the sentence
ungrammatical. We’ll talk about this phenomenon more in Chapter 5; the point here
is that we know how to distinguish grammatical sentences from ungrammatical ones,
without instruction. Note that prescriptive grammar demands whom in (1) but that
this accusative form of the wh-word is in decline in both spoken and written English.
As a note on the examples sentences, I use made-up examples if they are un-
controversial and use corpus examples, e.g. from the Corpus of American English
(COCA) in (1a), to convince you that they occur or to liven up the text.
When we look at c-command in Chapter 3, we encounter another example of
a phenomenon that depends on principles in the internal grammar rather than on
something that is necessary for communicative purposes. So, in (2), the closest ante-
cedent to the reflexive pronoun is the feminine Jane but the correct form is himself, as
in (2a), not herself. Why couldn’t (2b) mean that ‘he voted for her’?
(2) a. The husband of Jane voted for himself.
b. * The husband of Jane voted for herself.
 Chapter 1. Generative Grammar 3

The parasitic gap in (3) is a construction native speakers of English have never been
taught but which they have grammatical judgments on. The gaps in (3), indicated
by underlined spaces, show that which articles is the object of both the verb file and
the verb reading.
(3) Which articles did John file __ without reading __?

The interesting property is that which articles in (3) is connected to two different
gaps – hence the name parasitic gap – and this is usually not grammatical, as (4)
shows.
(4) * Who was he sent a picture of __ to __?
[meaning: To whom and of whom was he sent a picture?]

How do speakers know that it is grammatical to have an extra, i.e. parasitic, gap in (3)
but not in (4)?
How is the acquisition of phenomena such as those in (1) to (4) possible? It is
based on impoverished input since native speakers may never actually have heard
(1a), (2a), or (3) and still know that they are grammatical. The answer to this problem,
‘Plato’s Problem’ in Chomsky (1986), is Universal Grammar, the initial state of the
language faculty. This biologically innate organ helps the learner make sense of the
data and build an internal grammar (I-language), which then produces the sentences
a speaker utters (E-language). See Figure 1.2.

Universal Grammar
+
Input (e.g. English)
=
I-language E-language
Figure 1.2 Model of language acquisition (initial version)

The innate language faculty, when “stimulated by appropriate and continuing experi-
ence, … creates a grammar that creates sentences with formal and semantic proper-
ties”, according to Chomsky (1975: 36). Thus, our innate language faculty (or Universal
Grammar) enables us to create a set of rules, or grammar, by being exposed to (rather
chaotic) language around us. This input may be English or any other language. The
set of rules that we acquire enables us to produce sentences that we have never heard
before and that can be infinitely long (if we have the time and energy).
Language acquisition, in this framework, is not imitation but an interaction be-
tween Universal Grammar and exposure to a particular language. “Learning is primar-
ily a matter of filling in detail within a structure that is innate” (Chomsky 1975: 39). “A
physical organ, say the heart, may vary from one person to the next in size or strength,
4 Syntax

but its basic structure and its function within human physiology are common to the
species. Analogously, two individuals in the same speech community may acquire
grammars that differ somewhat in scale and subtlety. … These variations in structure
are limited …” (1975: 38).
Universal Grammar of the 1950s to 1970s has a lot of specific instructions and
rules. It includes rules for antecedent-reflexive relations to account for (2) and for
wh-movement to account for (1), (3), and (4). If humans only had 100,000 to 200,000
years – as is currently speculated – to develop the Faculty of Language, it makes sense
to attribute less to it. Currently, Universal Grammar just contains a simple operation
‘merge’ that combines two elements into a set. Merge includes what is referred to
in this book as ‘move’: the merging element is taken from inside the derivation and
copied. If Universal Grammar is no longer so important, the pre-linguistic conceptual
structure plays a much larger role, as I now show.
In Chapter 4, we’ll discuss the VP which is where the information is situated on
‘who does what to whom’, i.e. the argument structure. Arguments are obligatory ele-
ments for verbs. For instance, the verb arrive has one argument, the bus, in (5a) and
give has three, they, us, and books, in (6a). Adding more, as in (5b), or deleting one, as
in (6b), renders an ungrammatical sentence.
(5) a. The bus arrived.
b. * He arrived the bus.
(6) a. They gave us books.
b. * They gave us.

There is a debate as to how much of this information is listed with the verb in the
lexicon (Levin & Rappaport Hovav 1995) and how much added by the syntax (Borer
2005a–b). The big question is how children acquire this structure, which is very
complex. For instance, we distinguish arguments that are Agents from those that are
Themes and various researchers show that children distinguish intransitive verbs with
Agents (swim) from those with Themes (fall) from the moment they start using these
verbs (e.g. Snyder, Hyams & Crisma 1995; Costa & Friedmann 2012, and Ryan 2012).
That implies these concepts are innate. Children also distinguish the aspectual man-
ner from result verbs by using -ing in English for the former and past tense -ed for the
latter. We’ll talk about Agents, Themes, and aspect more in Chapter 4.
Bickerton (1990: 67) sees “[a]rgument structure … [a]s universal.” He writes that
the “universality of thematic structure suggests a deep-rooted ancestry, perhaps one
lying outside language altogether” (1990: 185). All languages have verbs for eating
and drinking and those verbs would have an Agent and a Theme connected with
them. Arguments are also represented in the syntax in predictable ways. Jackendoff
(2002), based on Bickerton, suggests that pre-linguistic primate conceptual structure
 Chapter 1. Generative Grammar 5

may already use symbols for basic semantic relations. If argument/thematic structure
predates the emergence of language, an understanding of causation, intentionality,
volition – all relevant to determining Agents, Causers, and Themes – may be part of
our larger cognitive system and not restricted to the language faculty.
Chomsky’s main interest is not the cognitive structure but the syntax and he de-
votes only a few words to the acquisition of the lexical knowledge. Early on (1965: 142),
he says that “semantic features … too, are presumably drawn from a universal ‘alpha-
bet’ but little is known about this today and nothing has been said about it here.” This
tradition of assuming innate knowledge goes back to the Greeks. A French source
from the 17th century says the following about ideas:
Ils “ne tirent en aucune sorte leur origine des sens. Notre âme a la faculté de les former
de soi-même.”
They ‘do not in any fashion have their origin in the senses. Our mind has the faculty
to form those on its own.’ (Arnauld & Nicole 1662 [1965]: 45)

In the next section, I’ll describe the Principles and Parameters approach to Universal
Grammar because it was very influential in the 1980s and 1990s and is still used
as a descriptive tool today. Then, I show how it is seen now, namely as restricted
to the lexicon.

2. Parameters: From syntax to lexicon

In the 1980s and 1990s, parameters are seen as choices that Universal Grammar
makes available to the language learner. They have to be set as +/− on the basis of the
available linguistic evidence. Early examples of parameters that Universal Grammar is
seen to supply are pro-drop (Rizzi 1982), headedness (Stowell 1981), and movement
of wh-elements (Huang 1982).
Pro-drop is the cover term for a set of related phenomena, the absence of the sub-
ject of a finite verb, the possibility to have subject-inversion, and more (see Chomsky
1981: 240). Not many linguists, however, believe that the phenomenon involves a +/−
setting of an actual parameter called ‘pro-drop’ and now it is seen as a property of the
lexicon, as I’ll mention later on.
If a transitive verb has no subject or object, these arguments are nevertheless as-
sumed to be present because otherwise the verb does not have its regular meaning. So,
the meaning of go depends on someone going. The empty subjects are usually referred
to with the first three letters of the word ‘pronoun’. If the empty subject is the subject
of a non-finite verb, we refer to it as PRO (‘big PRO’), as in (7).
6 Syntax

(7) pronounced as:

I want PRO to go. I want to go. / I wanna go.

If it is the subject of a finite verb, as in (8), we refer to it as pro (‘little pro’). (8) is the
Spanish translation of (7) that shows Spanish has both pro and PRO.
(8) pronounced as:
pro quiero PRO venir. Quiero venir.

Modern English has PRO but not pro, since a tensed/finite clause cannot have a null
subject, as (9) shows.
(9) * Now pro am talking to myself.       Now am talking to myself.

Some criteria for distinguishing between PRO and pro are that PRO is obligatorily
empty, while pro is optionally so, and that PRO is universally available if languages
have the appropriate non-finite clauses but pro exists only in certain languages. When
we talk about the Pro-drop parameter, we mean small pro.
In short, Modern English has null or empty subjects with infinitives, as in (7), but
lacks unexpressed subjects with finite sentences, as (9) shows. Spanish has both PRO
and pro and is therefore a pro-drop language. There are other kinds of empty elements
or copies. Thus, if an element moves, it leaves a copy, as who does in (1), and all lan-
guages have these elements. (Copies are sometimes referred to as traces).
Headedness is a helpful way to characterize a language, with Arabic, Irish, and
Chinese being head-initial and Japanese, Hindi/Urdu, and Korean head-final. Verbs,
prepositions, and nouns precede their complements in head-initial languages but fol-
low them in head-final ones. Examples are given in (10) and (11).
wo he
(10) a. cha Chinese VO
1s drink tea  
‘I drink tea.’ (tense is not marked here)
b. gen ta Chinese PO
with 3s  
‘with her/him’
Mẽ kitaab perhti hũ.
(11) a. Hindi/Urdu OV
1s book read be.1s  
‘I am reading the book.’ (I am ignoring the feminine on perhti)
b. mez per Hindi/Urdu PO
table on  
‘on the table’

Languages can also be head-initial for the P and head-final for the V, or have another
combination of category-specific headedness. Kayne (1994) abandons headedness
 Chapter 1. Generative Grammar 7

and argues that SVO is basic; other word orders come about through movement. This
position is frequently followed but one still encounters work using V-final as basic
and, as we’ll see in Section 3, recent work that says the syntax is unordered.
The wh-movement parameter describes the variation languages show in whether
they move the wh-pronoun or not, as in (12).
(12) ni xiangxin ta hui shuo shenme Chinese
2s think 3s will say what  
‘What do you think s/he will say?’

Though most introductory generative syntax books (Radford 2009a–b) continue

to cite this set of syntactic parameters, pro-drop/null subject, headedness, and wh-
movement, these are often used in very descriptive ways, not to explain what goes
on in language acquisition. Since Chomsky (1995), a major question is how these
parameters would have arisen in the brain. If the shift in humans from no language to
language was immediate, it makes sense that there is one crucial change in the way the
brain functions and that change could have been the introduction of merge. Complex
parameters of the pro-drop variety don’t fit in this non-gradual picture of evolution.
In addition, especially since Borer (1984), parameters have come to be seen as
choices of feature specifications as the child acquires a lexicon (Chomsky 2007). To
account for pro-drop, we assume that the Spanish lexicon includes an item with just
person and number features but no phonology. The computational system of every
language is seen as the same but the parametric choices are lexical and account for
the variety of languages. They also determine linear order but have no effect on the
semantic component. Baker, while disagreeing with this view of parameters, calls this
the Borer-Chomsky-Conjecture.
(13) Borer-Chomsky-Conjecture
“All parameters of variation are attributable to differences in the features of
particular items (e.g., the functional heads) in the lexicon.”  (Baker 2008: 156)

The conjecture in (13) describes how the lexicon is acquired. Children need to com-
bine the various (innate) semantic features into words.
Section 2 has outlined three traditional parameters that used to be seen as part of
Universal Grammar. They no longer are seen this way but nevertheless are helpful in
describing differences between languages.

3. Minimalism

In this section, I discuss what Minimalism is, how it shifted from a focus on Universal
Grammar to third factor principles, and what the most recent instantiation looks like.
8 Syntax

Minimalism is a program, not a theory, as Chomsky always emphasizes. It en-

courages inquiry into certain questions, such as ‘why is language the way it is’? The
computational system is assumed to contain only what is necessary to build repre-
sentations that connect sound (or sign or writing) to meaning. It is the same for all
languages. Because of this line of inquiry, derivations and structural representations
have become extremely bare, as we’ll see at the end of this section.
Since Chomsky (2005; 2007), as mentioned, the emphasis is on innate principles
not specific to the language faculty (Universal Grammar), but to “general properties
of organic systems” (Chomsky 2004: 105). Chomsky identifies the three factors that
are crucial in the development of language as follows, where I have taken the most
explicit formulations from different publications.
Three Factors
1. Genetic endowment, apparently nearly uniform for the species, which interprets
part of the environment as linguistic experience, a nontrivial task that the infant
carries out reflexively, and which determines the general course of the develop-
ment of the language faculty. Among the genetic elements, some may impose
computational limitations that disappear in a regular way through genetically
timed maturation …;
2. Experience, which leads to variation, within a fairly narrow range, as in the case of
other subsystems of the human capacity and the organism generally” (Chomsky
2005: 6);
3. Principles not specific to FL [the Faculty of Language]. Some of the third fac-
tor principles have the flavor of the constraints that enter into all facets of
growth and evolution …. Among these are principles of efficient computation”.
(Chomsky 2007: 3)
The first factor is the traditional Universal Grammar and the second factor is the ex-
perience that we saw in Figure 1.1. The third factor is new but somewhat related to the
first; it is favored above the language-specific one (for reasons of simplicity). The third
factor can be divided into several types, including principles of efficient computa-
tion. Economy Principles are probably also part of more general cognitive principles,
thus reducing the role of Universal Grammar even more. Figure 1.2 can therefore be
adapted as Figure 1.3.
 Chapter 1. Generative Grammar 9

Universal Grammar, cognitive principles, and third factors

+
Input (e.g. English)
=
I-language E-language
Figure 1.3 Model of language acquisition (final version)

As mentioned, the Minimalist Program proposes syntactic models and derivations

that are very minimal and the same for every language. Interfacing with the syntactic
derivation are the Conceptual-Intentional and Sensory-Motor systems. The former
is responsible for providing an interpretation and includes non-linguistic knowledge
where the latter is responsible for externalizing the derivation i.e. providing a spoken
or signed or written representation.
The minimalist model for deriving a sentence from 1995 on involves making a
selection from the lexicon, as in (14), and merging these items together, as in (15),
from bottom to top. The brackets indicate unordered sets that need to be ordered
when they are externalized.
(14) {they, read, will, the, books}
(15) a. {the, books}
b. {read, {the, books}}
c. {they, {read, {the, books}}}
d. {will, {they, {read, {the, books}}}}
e. {they, {will, {they, {read, {the, books}}}}}

In steps (15a–b), we are just combining the object and the verb, i.e. constructing the
VP. The other steps depend on the subject of the sentence being merged immediately
with the VP (15c) before the auxiliary will is in (15d). Sometimes the merge is ‘inter-
nal’, from inside the derivation, e.g. they in (15e). We often refer to this as the subject
moving to a higher position. We’ll talk about the details in Chapters 4 and 5.
In this book, as in e.g. Kayne (1994; 2013), we will not follow Chomsky in hav-
ing an unordered derivation. We will argue there is a base order, SVO, with an Agent
before the Verb and its Theme. The reason for this is that the externalization is not
understood well if we have a derivation without order, as in (15).
Another way of representing the derivation in (15) is through a tree, as in (16),
which I have only partially filled in. The TP is the Tense Phrase, where all vital infor-
mation on finiteness and agreement is stored. We will assume that what appears to the
left of one word in the tree will also be spoken, signed, or written first.
10 Syntax

(16) TP

They
will VP

they
read DP

the books

Merge as in (15) and (16) is recursive; one can continue to merge if there is enough
time. This property means we can make sentences that are in principle endless, as in
(17).
(17) I thought she mentioned that they were leaving because they had to visit an
uncle who was now living abroad in order to …

The current Problems of Projection (PoP) approach within Minimalism insists that
the derivation in (16) isn’t labelled when the tree/derivation is built. It says that syn-
tax only combines objects and yields unordered sets {X, Y} without a label (Chomsky
2013: 42), as already shown in (15). The labeling is done when the syntax hands over its
combined sets to the interfaces, as shown in Figure 1.4, which represents the current
model. This labeling mechanism is a third factor principle: needed for the interfaces.

Selection of lexical items

+
Merge

Interfaces: Conceptual- Sensory- Transfer/Labeling

Intentional Motor
Figure 1.4 The Minimalist model of language generation

Attractive in this model is that movement, as we’ll see is frequent in Chapters 4 and
5, is “driven by labeling failures” (Chomsky 2015: 7). For instance, if two phrases are
merged together, their heads are both as accessible and could both label the result.
This is a paradox that is resolved when one of the two moves and provides an explana-
tion for the movement of the subject that we’ll see in Chapter 4.
The PoP approach is still being debated and, even if it is accepted that the syntax
doesn’t label phrases, we still need to know the structure of sentences and the order
in which the words are externalized. Therefore, we will continue to use labeled and
ordered trees in the chapters that follow.
 Chapter 1. Generative Grammar 11

4. Conclusion

In this chapter, I have introduced Universal Grammar, innate structure, parameters,

merge, and labeling. Some of this will sound very abstract at this stage but I wanted
to give an indication of where the generative syntactic model is going. Mentioning
the unlabeled trees should make you worry less about all the fine details; we’ll put
the details in (most of the time) but that may be for descriptive purposes. Differences
between languages arise through lexical choices learners make in building the lexicon
of a particular language: pronouns may vary between full phrases or heads and the
inflection may be elaborate or not.
At the end of this chapter, you should be able to give an example of a traditional
syntactic parameter and know a little about the role of Universal Grammar in the
Minimalist Program. In the exercises, we’ll practice how to do glosses that we’ve seen
in (10) to (12) and (14) and (15), and to analyze example sentences from languages
other than (Modern) English.

Exercises

A. Radford (2009b: 35) provides the following sentence from Lucy. Descriptively speaking,
when Lucy produces (1), what is she doing? Which parameters have been set?

(1) What doing? (meaning: What are you doing?)

B. Using the list of abbreviations in the front of this book, what is the word order in (2), head-
initial or head-final? How would you translate this Hopi sentence (from Kalectaca 1978)?

(2) Nu’ kwaahu-t tuwa.

1s eagle-om saw

C. We will use two kinds of glosses for other languages: a morpheme-by-morpheme gloss,
using abbreviated symbols, and a freer translation, enclosed in single quotation marks.
Both are not always provided if the meaning is clear. The glosses list morphological features
such as accusative (acc) in cases where this is relevant for our discussion. Hyphens are used
when we can clearly see the morphemes; periods indicate morphemes that are fused. Much
stricter glosses are suggested at <www.eva.mpg.de/lingua/resources/glossing-rules.php>
Knowing this, explain in words what the glosses in (3) mean.

(3) mẽ kahaanii likh-tii hũ. Urdu/Hindi 20th century

1s.nom(f ) story write-pres.f be.pres.1s  
‘I am writing a story.’

D. Find a language of your own choice and explore if it has pro-drop.

12 Syntax

E. Which special characteristic of the faculty of language is shown in Figure 1.5?

Figure 1.5 “I’m telling on you” <http://babyblues.com/comics/march-19-2007>

Baby Blues: © 2007 Baby Blues Partnership Distributed by King Features Syndicate

F. To get some practice with corpus examples, find an example with a reflexive pronoun in
COCA and one in the BNC <http://corpus.byu.edu/bnc>
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
out his arms. Well poor little Susie wouldn’t like me to be here....
Everything for her and the bonny wee bairn.
“Hey there yous how about settlin?” bawled the barkeep after him
when he reached the door.
“Didnt the other feller pay?”
“Like hell he did.”
“But he was t-t-treating me....”
The barkeep laughed as he covered the money with a red lipper.
“I guess that bloat believes in savin.”

A small bearded bandylegged man in a derby walked up Allen

Street, up the sunstriped tunnel hung with skyblue and
smokedsalmon and mustardyellow quilts, littered with second hand
gingerbread-colored furniture. He walked with his cold hands
clasped over the tails of his frockcoat, picking his way among
packing boxes and scuttling children. He kept gnawing his lips and
clasping and unclasping his hands. He walked without hearing the
yells of the children or the annihilating clatter of the L trains overhead
or smelling the rancid sweet huddled smell of packed tenements.
At a yellowpainted drugstore at the corner of Canal, he stopped
and stared abstractedly at a face on a green advertising card. It was
a highbrowed cleanshaven distinguished face with arched eyebrows
and a bushy neatly trimmed mustache, the face of a man who had
money in the bank, poised prosperously above a crisp wing collar
and an ample dark cravat. Under it in copybook writing was the
signature King C. Gillette. Above his head hovered the motto no
stropping no honing. The little bearded man pushed his derby
back off his sweating brow and looked for a long time into the
dollarproud eyes of King C. Gillette. Then he clenched his fists,
threw back his shoulders and walked into the drugstore.
 His wife and daughters were out. He heated up a pitcher of water
on the gasburner. Then with the scissors he found on the mantel he
clipped the long brown locks of his beard. Then he started shaving
very carefully with the new nickelbright safety razor. He stood
trembling running his fingers down his smooth white cheeks in front
of the stained mirror. He was trimming his mustache when he heard
a noise behind him. He turned towards them a face smooth as the
face of King C. Gillette, a face with a dollarbland smile. The two little
girls’ eyes were popping out of their heads. “Mommer ... it’s popper,”
the biggest one yelled. His wife dropped like a laundrybag into the
rocker and threw the apron over her head.
“Oyoy! Oyoy!” she moaned rocking back and forth.
“Vat’s a matter? Dontye like it?” He walked back and forth with the
safety razor shining in his hand now and then gently fingering his
smooth chin.
II. Metropolis

T
here were Babylon and Nineveh: they
were built of brick. Athens was gold
marble columns. Rome was held up on
broad arches of rubble. In Constantinople
the minarets flame like great candles round
the Golden Horn ... Steel, glass, tile,
concrete will be the materials of the
skyscrapers. Crammed on the narrow island
the millionwindowed buildings will jut
glittering, pyramid on pyramid like the white
cloudhead above a thunderstorm.

W
hen the door of the room closed behind him, Ed Thatcher felt
very lonely, full of prickly restlessness. If Susie were only here
he’d tell her about the big money he was going to make and
how he’d deposit ten dollars a week in the savings bank just for little
Ellen; that would make five hundred and twenty dollars a year....
Why in ten years without the interest that’d come to more than five
thousand dollars. I must compute the compound interest on five
hundred and twenty dollars at four per cent. He walked excitedly
about the narrow room. The gas jet purred comfortably like a cat. His
eyes fell on the headline on a Journal that lay on the floor by the
coalscuttle where he had dropped it to run for the hack to take Susie
to the hospital.
MORTON SIGNS THE GREATER NEW YORK BILL

Completes the Act Making New York World’s Second

Metropolis
 Breathing deep he folded the paper and laid it on the table. The
world’s second metropolis.... And dad wanted me to stay in his ole
fool store in Onteora. Might have if it hadnt been for Susie....
Gentlemen tonight that you do me the signal honor of offering me the
junior partnership in your firm I want to present to you my little girl,
my wife. I owe everything to her.
In the bow he made towards the grate his coat-tails flicked a piece
of china off the console beside the bookcase. He made a little
clicking noise with his tongue against his teeth as he stooped to pick
it up. The head of the blue porcelain Dutch girl had broken off from
her body. “And poor Susie’s so fond of her knicknacks. I’d better go
to bed.”
He pushed up the window and leaned out. An L train was
rumbling past the end of the street. A whiff of coal smoke stung his
nostrils. He hung out of the window a long while looking up and
down the street. The world’s second metropolis. In the brick houses
and the dingy lamplight and the voices of a group of boys kidding
and quarreling on the steps of a house opposite, in the regular firm
tread of a policeman, he felt a marching like soldiers, like a
sidewheeler going up the Hudson under the Palisades, like an
election parade, through long streets towards something tall white
full of colonnades and stately. Metropolis.
The street was suddenly full of running. Somebody out of breath
let out the word Fire.
“Where at?”
The group of boys melted off the stoop across the way. Thatcher
turned back into the room. It was stifling hot. He was all tingling to be
out. I ought to go to bed. Down the street he heard the splattering
hoofbeats and the frenzied bell of a fire engine. Just take a look. He
ran down the stairs with his hat in his hand.
“Which way is it?”
“Down on the next block.”
“It’s a tenement house.”
 It was a narrowwindowed sixstory tenement. The hookandladder
had just drawn up. Brown smoke, with here and there a little trail of
sparks was pouring fast out of the lower windows. Three policemen
were swinging their clubs as they packed the crowd back against the
steps and railings of the houses opposite. In the empty space in the
middle of the street the fire engine and the red hosewagon shone
with bright brass. People watched silent staring at the upper
windows where shadows moved and occasional light flickered. A thin
pillar of flame began to flare above the house like a romancandle.
“The airshaft,” whispered a man in Thatcher’s ear. A gust of wind
filled the street with smoke and a smell of burning rags. Thatcher felt
suddenly sick. When the smoke cleared he saw people hanging in a
kicking cluster, hanging by their hands from a windowledge. The
other side firemen were helping women down a ladder. The flame in
the center of the house flared brighter. Something black had dropped
from a window and lay on the pavement shrieking. The policemen
were shoving the crowd back to the ends of the block. New fire
engines were arriving.
“Theyve got five alarms in,” a man said. “What do you think of
that? Everyone of ’em on the two top floors was trapped. It’s an
incendiary done it. Some goddam firebug.”
A young man sat huddled on the curb beside the gas lamp.
Thatcher found himself standing over him pushed by the crowd from
behind.
“He’s an Italian.”
“His wife’s in that buildin.”
“Cops wont let him get by.” “His wife’s in a family way. He cant talk
English to ask the cops.”
The man wore blue suspenders tied up with a piece of string in
back. His back was heaving and now and then he left out a string of
groaning words nobody understood.
Thatcher was working his way out of the crowd. At the corner a
man was looking into the fire alarm box. As Thatcher brushed past
him he caught a smell of coaloil from the man’s clothes. The man
looked up into his face with a smile. He had tallowy sagging cheeks
and bright popeyes. Thatcher’s hands and feet went suddenly cold.
The firebug. The papers say they hang round like that to watch it. He
walked home fast, ran up the stairs, and locked the room door
behind him. The room was quiet and empty. He’d forgotten that
Susie wouldnt be there waiting for him. He began to undress. He
couldnt forget the smell of coaloil on the man’s clothes.

Mr. Perry flicked at the burdock leaves with his cane. The real-
estate agent was pleading in a singsong voice:
“I dont mind telling you, Mr. Perry, it’s an opportunity not to be
missed. You know the old saying sir ... opportunity knocks but once
on a young man’s door. In six months I can virtually guarantee that
these lots will have doubled in value. Now that we are a part of New
York, the second city in the world, sir, dont forget that.... Why the
time will come, and I firmly believe that you and I will see it, when
bridge after bridge spanning the East River have made Long Island
and Manhattan one, when the Borough of Queens will be as much
the heart and throbbing center of the great metropolis as is Astor
Place today.”
“I know, I know, but I’m looking for something dead safe. And
besides I want to build. My wife hasnt been very well these last few
years....”
“But what could be safer than my proposition? Do you realize Mr.
Perry, that at considerable personal loss I’m letting you in on the
ground floor of one of the greatest real-estate certainties of modern
times. I’m putting at your disposal not only security, but ease,
comfort, luxury. We are caught up Mr. Perry on a great wave whether
we will or no, a great wave of expansion and progress. A great deal
is going to happen in the next few years. All these mechanical
inventions—telephones, electricity, steel bridges, horseless vehicles
—they are all leading somewhere. It’s up to us to be on the inside, in
the forefront of progress.... My God! I cant begin to tell you what it
will mean....” Poking amid the dry grass and the burdock leaves Mr.
Perry had moved something with his stick. He stooped and picked
up a triangular skull with a pair of spiralfluted horns. “By gad!” he
said. “That must have been a fine ram.”
Drowsy from the smell of lather and bayrum and singed hair that
weighed down the close air of the barbershop, Bud sat nodding, his
hands dangling big and red between his knees. In his eardrums he
could still feel through the snipping of scissors the pounding of his
feet on the hungry road down from Nyack.
“Next!”
“Whassat?... All right I just want a shave an a haircut.”
The barber’s pudgy hands moved through his hair, the scissors
whirred like a hornet behind his ears. His eyes kept closing; he
jerked them open fighting sleep. He could see beyond the striped
sheet littered with sandy hair the bobbing hammerhead of the
colored boy shining his shoes.
“Yessir” a deepvoiced man droned from the next chair, “it’s time
the Democratic party nominated a strong ...”
“Want a neckshave as well?” The barber’s greasyskinned
moonface poked into his.
He nodded.
“Shampoo?”
“No.”
When the barber threw back the chair to shave him he wanted to
crane his neck like a mudturtle turned over on its back. The lather
spread drowsily on his face, prickling his nose, filling up his ears.
Drowning in featherbeds of lather, blue lather, black, slit by the
faraway glint of the razor, glint of the grubbing hoe through blueblack
lather clouds. The old man on his back in the potatofield, his beard
sticking up lathery white full of blood. Full of blood his socks from
those blisters on his heels. His hands gripped each other cold and
horny like a dead man’s hands under the sheet. Lemme git up.... He
opened his eyes. Padded fingertips were stroking his chin. He stared
up at the ceiling where four flies made figure eights round a red
crêpe-paper bell. His tongue was dry leather in his mouth. The
barber righted the chair again. Bud looked about blinking. “Four bits,
and a nickel for the shine.”
ADMITS KILLING CRIPPLED MOTHER ...
“D’yous mind if I set here a minute an read that paper?” he hears
his voice drawling in his pounding ears.
“Go right ahead.”
PARKER’S FRIENDS PROTECT ...
The black print squirms before his eyes. Russians ... MOB
STONES ... (Special Dispatch to the Herald) Trenton, N. J.
Nathan Sibbetts, fourteen years old, broke down today
after two weeks of steady denial of guilt and confessed to the
police that he was responsible for the death of his aged and
crippled mother, Hannah Sibbetts, after a quarrel in their
home at Jacob’s Creek, six miles above this city. Tonight he
was committed to await the action of the Grand Jury.
RELIEVE PORT ARTHUR IN FACE OF ENEMY ... Mrs. Rix
Loses Husband’s Ashes.
On Tuesday May 24 at about half past eight o’clock I came
home after sleeping on the steam roller all night, he said, and
went upstairs to sleep some more. I had only gotten to sleep
when my mother came upstairs and told me to get up and if I
didn’t get up she would throw me downstairs. My mother
grabbed hold of me to throw me downstairs. I threw her first
and she fell to the bottom. I went downstairs and found that
her head was twisted to one side. I then saw that she was
dead and then I straightened her neck and covered her up
with the cover from my bed.
Bud folds the paper carefully, lays it on the chair and leaves the
barbershop. Outside the air smells of crowds, is full of noise and
sunlight. No more’n a needle in a haystack ... “An I’m twentyfive
years old,” he muttered aloud. Think of a kid fourteen.... He walks
faster along roaring pavements where the sun shines through the
Elevated striping the blue street with warm seething yellow stripes.
No more’n a needle in a haystack.

Ed Thatcher sat hunched over the pianokeys picking out the

Mosquito Parade. Sunday afternoon sunlight streamed dustily
through the heavy lace curtains of the window, squirmed in the red
roses of the carpet, filled the cluttered parlor with specks and
splinters of light. Susie Thatcher sat limp by the window watching
him out of eyes too blue for her sallow face. Between them, stepping
carefully among the roses on the sunny field of the carpet, little Ellen
danced. Two small hands held up the pinkfrilled dress and now and
then an emphatic little voice said, “Mummy watch my expression.”
“Just look at the child,” said Thatcher, still playing. “She’s a
regular little balletdancer.”
Sheets of the Sunday paper lay where they had fallen from the
table; Ellen started dancing on them, tearing the sheets under her
nimble tiny feet.
“Dont do that Ellen dear,” whined Susie from the pink plush chair.
“But mummy I can do it while I dance.”
“Dont do that mother said.” Ed Thatcher had slid into the
Barcarole. Ellen was dancing to it, her arms swaying to it, her feet
nimbly tearing the paper.
“Ed for Heaven’s sake pick the child up; she’s tearing the paper.”
He brought his fingers down in a lingering chord. “Deary you
mustnt do that. Daddy’s not finished reading it.”
Ellen went right on. Thatcher swooped down on her from the
pianostool and set her squirming and laughing on his knee. “Ellen
you should always mind when mummy speaks to you, and dear you
shouldnt be destructive. It costs money to make that paper and
people worked on it and daddy went out to buy it and he hasnt
finished reading it yet. Ellie understands dont she now? We need
con-struction and not de-struction in this world.” Then he went on
with the Barcarole and Ellen went on dancing, stepping carefully
among the roses on the sunny field of the carpet.

There were six men at the table in the lunch room eating fast with
their hats on the backs of their heads.
“Jiminy crickets!” cried the young man at the end of the table who
was holding a newspaper in one hand and a cup of coffee in the
other. “Kin you beat it?”
“Beat what?” growled a longfaced man with a toothpick in the
corner of his mouth.
“Big snake appears on Fifth Avenue.... Ladies screamed and ran
in all directions this morning at eleven thirty when a big snake
crawled out of a crack in the masonry of the retaining wall of the
reservoir at Fifth Avenue and Fortysecond Street and started to
cross the sidewalk....”
“Some fish story....”
“That aint nothin,” said an old man. “When I was a boy we used to
go snipeshootin on Brooklyn Flats....”
“Holy Moses! it’s quarter of nine,” muttered the young man folding
his paper and hurrying out into Hudson Street that was full of men
and girls walking briskly through the ruddy morning. The scrape of
the shoes of hairyhoofed drayhorses and the grind of the wheels of
producewagons made a deafening clatter and filled the air with sharp
dust. A girl in a flowered bonnet with a big lavender bow under her
pert tilted chin was waiting for him in the door of M. Sullivan & Co.,
Storage and Warehousing. The young man felt all fizzy inside, like a
freshly uncorked bottle of pop.
“Hello Emily!... Say Emily I’ve got a raise.”
“You’re pretty near late, d’you know that?”
 “But honest injun I’ve got a two-dollar raise.”
She tilted her chin first to oneside and then to the other.
“I dont give a rap.”
“You know what you said if I got a raise.” She looked in his eyes
giggling.
“An this is just the beginnin ...”
“But what good’s fifteen dollars a week?”
“Why it’s sixty dollars a month, an I’m learning the import
business.”
“Silly boy you’ll be late.” She suddenly turned and ran up the
littered stairs, her pleated bellshaped skirt swishing from side to side.
“God! I hate her. I hate her.” Sniffing up the tears that were hot in
his eyes, he walked fast down Hudson Street to the office of Winkle
& Gulick, West India Importers.

The deck beside the forward winch was warm and briny damp.
They were sprawled side by side in greasy denims talking drowsily in
whispers, their ears full of the seethe of broken water as the bow
shoved bluntly through the long grassgray swells of the Gulf Stream.
“J’te dis mon vieux, moi j’fou l’camp à New York.... The minute we
tie up I go ashore and I stay ashore. I’m through with this dog’s life.”
The cabinboy had fair hair and an oval pink-and-cream face; a dead
cigarette butt fell from between his lips as he spoke. “Merde!” He
reached for it as it rolled down the deck. It escaped his hand and
bounced into the scuppers.
“Let it go. I’ve got plenty,” said the other boy who lay on his belly
kicking a pair of dirty feet up into the hazy sunlight. “The consul will
just have you shipped back.”
“He wont catch me.”
 “And your military service?”
“To hell with it. And with France too for that matter.”
“You want to make yourself an American citizen?”
“Why not? A man has a right to choose his country.”
The other rubbed his nose meditatively with his fist and then let
his breath out in a long whistle. “Emile you’re a wise guy,” he said.
“But Congo, why dont you come too? You dont want to shovel
crap in a stinking ship’s galley all your life.”
Congo rolled himself round and sat up crosslegged, scratching his
head that was thick with kinky black hair.
“Say how much does a woman cost in New York?”
“I dunno, expensive I guess.... I’m not going ashore to raise hell;
I’m going to get a good job and work. Cant you think of nothing but
women?”
“What’s the use? Why not?” said Congo and settled himself flat on
the deck again, burying his dark sootsmudged face in his crossed
arms.
“I want to get somewhere in the world, that’s what I mean.
Europe’s rotten and stinking. In America a fellow can get ahead.
Birth dont matter, education dont matter. It’s all getting ahead.”
“And if there was a nice passionate little woman right here now
where the deck’s warm, you wouldn’t like to love her up?”
“After we’re rich, we’ll have plenty, plenty of everything.”
“And they dont have any military service?”
“Why should they? Its the coin they’re after. They dont want to
fight people; they want to do business with them.”
Congo did not answer.
The cabin boy lay on his back looking at the clouds. They floated
from the west, great piled edifices with the sunlight crashing through
between, bright and white like tinfoil. He was walking through tall
white highpiled streets, stalking in a frock coat with a tall white collar
up tinfoil stairs, broad, cleanswept, through blue portals into streaky
marble halls where money rustled and clinked on long tinfoil tables,
banknotes, silver, gold.
“Merde v’là l’heure.” The paired strokes of the bell in the
crowsnest came faintly to their ears. “But dont forget, Congo, the first
night we get ashore ...” He made a popping noise with his lips.
“We’re gone.”
“I was asleep. I dreamed of a little blonde girl. I’d have had her if
you hadnt waked me.” The cabinboy got to his feet with a grunt and
stood a moment looking west to where the swells ended in a sharp
wavy line against a sky hard and abrupt as nickel. Then he pushed
Congo’s face down against the deck and ran aft, the wooden clogs
clattering on his bare feet as he went.

Outside, the hot June Saturday was dragging its frazzled ends
down 110th Street. Susie Thatcher lay uneasily in bed, her hands
spread blue and bony on the coverlet before her. Voices came
through the thin partition. A young girl was crying through her nose:
“I tell yer mommer I aint agoin back to him.”
Then came expostulating an old staid Jewish woman’s voice: “But
Rosie, married life aint all beer and skittles. A vife must submit and
vork for her husband.”
“I wont. I cant help it. I wont go back to the dirty brute.”
Susie sat up in bed, but she couldn’t hear the next thing the old
woman said.
“But I aint a Jew no more,” suddenly screeched the young girl.
“This aint Russia; it’s little old New York. A girl’s got some rights
here.” Then a door slammed and everything was quiet.
Susie Thatcher stirred in bed moaning fretfully. Those awful
people never give me a moment’s peace. From below came the
jingle of a pianola playing the Merry Widow Waltz. O Lord! why dont
Ed come home? It’s cruel of them to leave a sick woman alone like
this. Selfish. She twisted up her mouth and began to cry. Then she
lay quiet again, staring at the ceiling watching the flies buzz teasingly
round the electriclight fixture. A wagon clattered by down the street.
She could hear children’s voices screeching. A boy passed yelling
an extra. Suppose there’d been a fire. That terrible Chicago theater
fire. Oh I’ll go mad! She tossed about in the bed, her pointed nails
digging into the palms of her hands. I’ll take another tablet. Maybe I
can get some sleep. She raised herself on her elbow and took the
last tablet out of a little tin box. The gulp of water that washed the
tablet down was soothing to her throat. She closed her eyes and lay
quiet.
She woke with a start. Ellen was jumping round the room, her
green tam falling off the back of her head, her coppery curls wild.
“Oh mummy I want to be a little boy.”
“Quieter dear. Mother’s not feeling a bit well.”
“I want to be a little boy.”
“Why Ed what have you done to the child? She’s all wrought up.”
“We’re just excited, Susie. We’ve been to the most wonderful play.
You’d have loved it, it’s so poetic and all that sort of thing. And
Maude Adams was fine. Ellie loved every minute of it.”
“It seems silly, as I said before, to take such a young child ...”
“Oh daddy I want to be a boy.”
“I like my little girl the way she is. We’ll have to go again Susie
and take you.”
“Ed you know very well I wont be well enough.” She sat bolt
upright, her hair hanging a straight faded yellow down her back. “Oh,
I wish I’d die ... I wish I’d die, and not be a burden to you any more....
You hate me both of you. If you didnt hate me you wouldnt leave me
alone like this.” She choked and put her face in her hands. “Oh I
wish I’d die,” she sobbed through her fingers.
 “Now Susie for Heaven’s sakes, it’s wicked to talk like that.” He
put his arm round her and sat on the bed beside her.
Crying quietly she dropped her head on his shoulder. Ellen stood
staring at them out of round gray eyes. Then she started jumping up
and down, chanting to herself, “Ellie’s goin to be a boy, Ellie’s goin to
be a boy.”

With a long slow stride, limping a little from his blistered feet, Bud
walked down Broadway, past empty lots where tin cans glittered
among grass and sumach bushes and ragweed, between ranks of
billboards and Bull Durham signs, past shanties and abandoned
squatters’ shacks, past gulches heaped with wheelscarred
rubbishpiles where dumpcarts were dumping ashes and clinkers,
past knobs of gray outcrop where steamdrills continually tapped and
nibbled, past excavations out of which wagons full of rock and clay
toiled up plank roads to the street, until he was walking on new
sidewalks along a row of yellow brick apartment houses, looking in
the windows of grocery stores, Chinese laundries, lunchrooms,
flower and vegetable shops, tailors’, delicatessens. Passing under a
scaffolding in front of a new building, he caught the eye of an old
man who sat on the edge of the sidewalk trimming oil lamps. Bud
stood beside him, hitching up his pants; cleared his throat:
“Say mister you couldnt tell a feller where a good place was to
look for a job?”
“Aint no good place to look for a job, young feller.... There’s jobs
all right.... I’ll be sixty-five years old in a month and four days an I’ve
worked sence I was five I reckon, an I aint found a good job yet.”
“Anything that’s a job’ll do me.”
“Got a union card?”
“I aint got nothin.”
 “Cant git no job in the buildin trades without a union card,” said
the old man. He rubbed the gray bristles of his chin with the back of
his hand and leaned over the lamps again. Bud stood staring into the
dustreeking girder forest of the new building until he found the eyes
of a man in a derby hat fixed on him through the window of the
watchman’s shelter. He shuffled his feet uneasily and walked on. If I
could git more into the center of things....
At the next corner a crowd was collecting round a highslung white
automobile. Clouds of steam poured out of its rear end. A policeman
was holding up a small boy by the armpits. From the car a redfaced
man with white walrus whiskers was talking angrily.
“I tell you officer he threw a stone.... This sort of thing has got to
stop. For an officer to countenance hoodlums and rowdies....”
A woman with her hair done up in a tight bunch on top of her head
was screaming, shaking her fist at the man in the car, “Officer he
near run me down he did, he near run me down.”
Bud edged up next to a young man in a butcher’s apron who had
a baseball cap on backwards.
“Wassa matter?”
“Hell I dunno.... One o them automoebile riots I guess. Aint you
read the paper? I dont blame em do you? What right have those
golblamed automoebiles got racin round the city knockin down
wimen an children?”
“Gosh do they do that?”
“Sure they do.”
“Say ... er ... kin you tell me about where’s a good place to find out
about gettin a job?” The butcherboy threw back head and laughed.
“Kerist I thought you was goin to ask for a handout.... I guess you
aint a Newyorker.... I’ll tell you what to do. You keep right on down
Broadway till you get to City Hall....”
“Is that kinder the center of things?”
 “Sure it is.... An then you go upstairs and ask the Mayor.... Tell me
there are some seats on the board of aldermen ...”
“Like hell they are,” growled Bud and walked away fast.

“Roll ye babies ... roll ye lobsided sons o bitches.”

“That’s it talk to em Slats.”
“Come seven!” Slats shot the bones out of his hand, brought the
thumb along his sweaty fingers with a snap. “Aw hell.”
“You’re some great crapshooter I’ll say, Slats.”
Dirty hands added each a nickel to the pile in the center of the
circle of patched knees stuck forward. The five boys were sitting on
their heels under a lamp on South Street.
“Come on girlies we’re waitin for it.... Roll ye little bastards,
goddam ye, roll.”
“Cheeze it fellers! There’s Big Leonard an his gang acomin down
the block.”
“I’d knock his block off for a ...”
Four of them were already slouching off along the wharf, gradually
scattering without looking back. The smallest boy with a chinless
face shaped like a beak stayed behind quietly picking up the coins.
Then he ran along the wall and vanished into the dark passageway
between two houses. He flattened himself behind a chimney and
waited. The confused voices of the gang broke into the passageway;
then they had gone on down the street. The boy was counting the
nickels in his hand. Ten. “Jez, that’s fifty cents.... I’ll tell ’em Big
Leonard scooped up the dough.” His pockets had no bottoms, so he
tied the nickels into one of his shirt tails.
 A goblet for Rhine wine hobnobbed with a champagne glass at
each place along the glittering white oval table. On eight glossy white
plates eight canapés of caviar were like rounds of black beads on
the lettuceleaves, flanked by sections of lemon, sprinkled with a
sparse chopping of onion and white of egg. “Beaucoup de soing and
dont you forget it,” said the old waiter puckering up his knobbly
forehead. He was a short waddling man with a few black strands of
hair plastered tight across a domed skull.
“Awright.” Emile nodded his head gravely. His collar was too tight
for him. He was shaking a last bottle of champagne into the
nickelbound bucket of ice on the serving-table.
“Beaucoup de soing, sporca madonna.... Thisa guy trows money
about lika confetti, see.... Gives tips, see. He’s a verra rich
gentleman. He dont care how much he spend.” Emile patted the
crease of the tablecloth to flatten it. “Fais pas, como, ça.... Your
hand’s dirty, maybe leava mark.”
Resting first on one foot then on the other they stood waiting, their
napkins under their arms. From the restaurant below among the
buttery smells of food and the tinkle of knives and forks and plates,
came the softly gyrating sound of a waltz.
When he saw the headwaiter bow outside the door Emile
compressed his lips into a deferential smile. There was a
longtoothed blond woman in a salmon operacloak swishing on the
arm of a moonfaced man who carried his top hat ahead of him like a
bumper; there was a little curlyhaired girl in blue who was showing
her teeth and laughing, a stout woman in a tiara with a black velvet
ribbon round her neck, a bottlenose, a long cigarcolored face ...
shirtfronts, hands straightening white ties, black gleams on top hats
and patent leather shoes; there was a weazlish man with gold teeth
who kept waving his arms spitting out greetings in a voice like a
crow’s and wore a diamond the size of a nickel in his shirtfront. The
redhaired cloakroom girl was collecting the wraps. The old waiter
nudged Emile. “He’s de big boss,” he said out of the corner of his
mouth as he bowed. Emile flattened himself against the wall as they
shuffled rustled into the room. A whiff of patchouli when he drew his
breath made him go suddenly hot to the roots of his hair.
“But where’s Fifi Waters?” shouted the man with the diamond
stud.
“She said she couldnt get here for a half an hour. I guess the
Johnnies wont let her get by the stage door.”
“Well we cant wait for her even if it is her birthday; never waited
for anyone in my life.” He stood a second running a roving eye over
the women round the table, then shot his cuffs out a little further from
the sleeves of his swallowtail coat, and abruptly sat down. The caviar
vanished in a twinkling. “And waiter what about that Rhine wine
coupe?” he croaked huskily. “De suite monsieur....” Emile holding his
breath and sucking in his cheeks, was taking away the plates. A frost
came on the goblets as the old waiter poured out the coupe from a
cut glass pitcher where floated mint and ice and lemon rind and long
slivvers of cucumber.
“Aha, this’ll do the trick.” The man with the diamond stud raised
his glass to his lips, smacked them and set it down with a slanting
look at the woman next him. She was putting dabs of butter on bits
of bread and popping them into her mouth, muttering all the while:
“I can only eat the merest snack, only the merest snack.”
“That dont keep you from drinkin Mary does it?”
She let out a cackling laugh and tapped him on the shoulder with
her closed fan. “O Lord, you’re a card, you are.”
“Allume moi ça, sporca madonna,” hissed the old waiter in Emile’s
ear.
When he lit the lamps under the two chafing dishes on the serving
table a smell of hot sherry and cream and lobster began to seep into
the room. The air was hot, full of tinkle and perfume and smoke.
After he had helped serve the lobster Newburg and refilled the
glasses Emile leaned against the wall and ran his hand over his wet
hair. His eyes slid along the plump shoulders of the woman in front of
him and down the powdered back to where a tiny silver hook had
come undone under the lace rushing. The baldheaded man next to
her had his leg locked with hers. She was young, Emile’s age, and
kept looking up into the man’s face with moist parted lips. It made
Emile dizzy, but he couldn’t stop looking.
“But what’s happened to the fair Fifi?” creaked the man with the
diamond stud through a mouthful of lobster. “I suppose that she
made such a hit again this evening that our simple little party dont
appeal to her.”
“It’s enough to turn any girl’s head.”
“Well she’ll get the surprise of her young life if she expected us to
wait. Haw, haw, haw,” laughed the man with the diamond stud. “I
never waited for anybody in my life and I’m not going to begin now.”
Down the table the moonfaced man had pushed back his plate
and was playing with the bracelet on the wrist of the woman beside
him. “You’re the perfect Gibson girl tonight, Olga.”
“I’m sitting for my portrait now,” she said holding up her goblet
against the light.
“To Gibson?”
“No to a real painter.”
“By Gad I’ll buy it.”
“Maybe you wont have a chance.”
She nodded her blond pompadour at him.
“You’re a wicked little tease, Olga.”
She laughed keeping her lips tight over her long teeth.
A man was leaning towards the man with the diamond stud,
tapping with a stubby finger on the table.
“No sir as a real estate proposition, Twentythird Street has
crashed.... That’s generally admitted.... But what I want to talk to you
about privately sometime Mr. Godalming, is this.... How’s all the big
money in New York been made? Astor, Vanderbilt, Fish.... In real