100223

English Syntax

Unit 5. Functional categories I-TP

Adger (2003) Chapter 5. Section 5.1-5.3
On beyond v
• Our trees have now expanded from VPs to vPs.

• The UTAH:
• NP, daughter of vP: Agent
• NP, daughter of VP: Theme
• PP, daughter of V: Goal

• But this is only the beginning…

Sentences are headed (I)
• Traditional idea of the structure of sentences: Subject +
Predicate (usually VP).
Sentence

Subject VP

• The sentence doesn’t have a head.

• So the category “Sentence” (if a category at all) is special in

that it is introduced differently from NPs, VPs, PPs, etc.
Sentences are headed (II)
• What if vP is selected by a T(ense) head hosting the tense
features of the clause?
TP

Subject T’

T vP

• Advantage: a sentence is a projection of T in the same way a

VP is a projection of V, vP of v, NP of N, etc...
• There’s no independent category “Sentence” in syntax.
Functional categories
• Functional categories:
• Head a projection
• Do not assign theta-roles

• Lexical categories: V, N, A, P
Empirical evidence for T and TP: auxiliaries, modals
and verbs (I)

• Consider the following:

• I ate.
• I could eat.
• I had eaten.
• I was eating.
• I had been eating.
• I could have eaten.
• I could be eating.
• I could have been eating.
• So: could, have, be, eat. How do we determine what
form each verb takes?
Empirical evidence for T and TP: auxiliaries, modals
and verbs (II)

• What are these things?

• Have: Perfective (aspect)
• I have eaten. I had eaten.
• Be: Progressive (aspect)
• I am eating. I was eating.
• Could: Modal
• I can eat. I could eat. I shall eat. I should eat. I may eat. I might eat. I will
eat. I would eat.
Empirical evidence for T and TP: auxiliaries, modals
and verbs (III)

• Consider the following:

• I could have been eating.
• *I could be having eaten.
• *I was canning have eaten.
• *I had cannen be eating.
• *I was having cannen eat.
• *I had been canning eat.

• It looks like there’s an order:

• Modal, Perf, Prog, verb.
Empirical evidence for T and TP: auxiliaries, modals
and verbs (IV)

• Suppose:
• Have is of category Perf.
• Be is of category Prog.
• May, might, can, could are of category M.
• They are heads from the lexicon, we will Merge them
into the tree above vP. Their order is captured by a
Hierarchy of Projections:
• Modal > Perf > Prog > v > V
• Except not every sentence has these. So:
• (Modal) > (Perf) > (Prog) > v > V
Negation
• Consider the following:
• I did not eat.
• I could not eat.
• I had not eaten.
• I was not eating.
• I had not been eating.
• I could not have been eating.
• Suppose not is of category Neg.
• How do we describe where not occurs? How can we fit
it into our Hierarchy of Projections?
Where does Neg fit?
• Suppose that we can fit Neg in our Hierarchy of
Projections.
• (Modal) > (Perf) > (Prog) > v > V
• Where would it go, and how can we explain the word
order patterns?
• I could not have been eating.
• I had not been eating.
• I was not eating.
• I did not eat.
• Remember v and how we explained where the verb is
in I gave a book to Ed?
So…
• Picture this:
• I ?+might not <might> have been eating.
• I ?+had not <had> been eating.
• I ?+was not <was> eating.
• So what is ?, then?
• He did not eat. He ate.
• He does not eat. He eats.
• All that do seems to be doing there is providing an indication of
tense.
• So ? above is T and Neg goes above all the other things, but
below tense (category T).

• T > (Neg) > (M) > (Perf) > (Prog) > v > V
Hierarchy of Projections revisited
• T > (Neg) > (M) > (Perf) > (Prog) > v > V
• Just as V moves to v, so do Perf, Prog, and M move to T.
• If Neg is there, you can actually see movement of M in the
examples below happening.

• They T+shall not <shall> be eating lunch.

• They T+shall <shall> be eating lunch.
What does do do?
• But what about when there’s just a verb and Neg, but
no M, Perf, or Prog?
• I ate lunch.
• *I ate not lunch.
• I did not eat lunch.
• Eat clearly does not move to T.
• Not “gets in the way”, so tense cannot “see” the verb.
Instead, the meaningless verb do is pronounced, to
“support” tense. Do-support.
So, we have T
• The idea: The tense of a clause (past, present) is the
information that T brings to the structure.
• T has features like [T, past] or [T, pres] (or [T,
nonpast])
• These features are interpretable on T.
• We see reflections of tense features on verbs (give,
gave, go, went) but they are just reflections.
• The interpretable tense features don’t live on verbs,
they live on T.
 Pat cooked lunch.
• Select from the Lexicon:
Pat [N, …]
v [v, uN, uInfl: ]
cook [V, uN, …]
lunch [N, …]
T [T, past]

• Merge cook and lunch, checking the uN

feature of cook (and assigning a q-role to
lunch, namely Theme—this is NP NP
daughter of VP). Pat
v VP
[v, uN, uInfl: ]
V NP
cook lunch
[V, uN, …] [N, …]
 Pat cooked lunch.
• Merge v and the VP cook lunch, in
conformance with the Hierarchy of
Projections.
• v projects, and still has a uN and a uInfl
feature.

NP v [v, uN, …]
Pat
v VP
[v, uN, uInfl: ]
V NP
cook lunch
 Pat cooked lunch.
• Merge v and the VP cook lunch, in
conformance with the Hierarchy of
Projections.
• v projects, and still has a uN and a uInfl
feature.
• Move the V cook up to v.

NP v [v, uN, uInf

Pat
v VP

V NP
cook lunch
 Pat cooked lunch.
• Merge v and the VP cook lunch, in
conformance with the Hierarchy of
Projections.
• v projects, and still has a uN and a uInfl
feature.
• Move the V cook up to v.
vP
• Merge Pat with v to check the uN feature
and assign a q-role (Agent, this is NP NP v [v, uN, uInf
daughter of vP).
Pat
v+V VP
cook
<cook> NP
lunch
 Pat cooked lunch.
• Merge v and the VP cook lunch, in
conformance with the Hierarchy of
Projections.
• v projects, and still has a uN and a T’
uInfl feature.
• Move the V cook up to v. T [past]
vP [uInfl: past]
• Merge Pat with v to check the uN
feature and assign a q-role (Agent, NP v [v, uN, uInf
this is NP daughter of vP).
Pat
• Merge T[past] to check the [uInfl: ]
v+V VP
feature of v.
cook
• Pronounce v[uInfl:past] as –ed. <cook> NP
lunch
 Pat has cooked lunch.
• So, now what do we do with has in a
sentence such as Pat has cooked lunch?

• have [Perf]
• have [Perf] …v[uInfl: ]  have [Perf] …
v[uInfl: Perf] vP

NP v [v, uN, uInf

Pat
v+V VP
cook
<cook> NP
lunch
 Pat has cooked lunch.
• If we leave everything as it is so far
(UTAH, Hierarchy of Projections),
the only option is to Merge have with
the vP we just built.

• So, let’s.
Perf vP
have
NP v [v, uN, uInf
[Perf, uInfl:]
• Notice that have will eventually be Pat
specified as present, so it also carries v+V VP
a [uInfl: ] feature. eat
<eat> NP
lunch
 Pat has cooked lunch.
• Now, we have one more thing on our
workbench (T) and the HoP says that
once we finish with Perf, we Merge it
with T. PerfP

• And so Merge T, we shall.

Perf
vP [uInfl: Perf]
have
NP v [v, uN]
[Perf, uInfl:]
Pat
v+V VP
cook
<cook> NP
lunch
 Pat has cooked lunch.
• Then, Perf moves up to T.
T [TP?]
• Why? Because Perf, Prog and M all move
up to T. For the same kind of reason that V
moves up to v.
T PerfP
[T, pres]
Perf vP
have
NP v [v, uN, uInfl:Pe
[Perf, uInfl:pres]
Pat
v+V VP
cook
<cook> NP
lunch
 Pat has cooked lunch.
• Ok, that’s all fine and good, except
that the sentence is T [TP?]
Pat has cooked lunch
not T+Perf PerfP
Has Pat cooked lunch
has
<Perf> vP
• How do we get Pat has cooked lunch
out of this? NP v [v, uN, uInfl:Pe
Pat
v+V VP
cook
<cook> NP
lunch
 Pat has cooked lunch.
TP

NP T
Pat
T+Perf PerfP
has
<Perf> vP

• As previewed in the previous <Pat> v

episode, the subject moves to this
first position in the sentence, around v+V VP
the modal. cook
<cook> NP
lunch
 Pat has cooked lunch.
TP
• Why?
• It is a property of T.
NP T
• T needs to have an NP in its
Pat
specifier. T+Perf PerfP
has
<Perf> vP

<Pat> v
• We can encode this as an uninterpretable
feature on T: [uN*]. v+V VP
cook
<cook> NP
lunch
 A bit more on [uInfl: ] (I)
• You may recall that we at one point talked about divide features into types;
now’s the time it matters.
• There are tense features. Like past, like present.
• There are case features. Like nom, like acc.
• There are person features. Like 1st, like 2nd.
• There are gender features. Like masculine, like feminine.
• So, we can think of this as a feature category or feature type
that has a value.
• [Gender: masculine] [Person: 1st]
• [Tense: past] [Case: nom]
A bit more on [uInfl: ] (II)
• T nodes have features of the tense type. Maybe past,
maybe present.
• Suppose that v has an uninterpretable feature of the
tense type, but unvalued.
• In the configuration X[F: val] … Y[uF: ]
F checks and values uF, resulting in
X[F: val] … Y[uF: val]
• So, T[Infl:past] … v[uInfl: ]  T[Infl:past] …
v[uInfl:past]
Valuing [uInfl: ]
• A concise statement of the things with [uInfl:] and the
things that can value [uInfl:]:
• These have [uInfl: ] features:
• v, M, Perf, Prog
• [uInfl: ] features can be valued (via Agree) by:
• Tense features (past, present) of T. -s or -ed.
• Perf feature of Perf. -en.
• Prog feature of Prog. -ing.
• M feature of M. -Ø (silent)
 Pat was cooking lunch.
• Pat [N, …] TP
v [uN, uInfl:, …]
be [Prog, uInfl:, …]
cook [V, uN, …] NP
T [T, uN*, tense:past,
lunch [N, …] Pat
T [T, tense:past, …]
TProgP
[tense:past, T, uN*, …]
Prog vP
[Prog, uInfl:past]
was
<Pat> v

v[uInfl:prog]+V VP
cooking
<cook> NP
lunch