I-Language by Charles Reiss

Author:Charles Reiss [Reiss, Charles]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2010-12-30T14:05:08.453000+00:00

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S O M E D E TA I L S O F S E N T E N C E S T RU C T U R E

is a constituent under both interpretations. In fact, the difference between the two is whether the prepositional phrase with a belt is grouped together in a larger constituent with the chicken or not. The two ways of grouping the simple syntactic categories into phrasal categories that correspond to the two interpretations are given below:

7.42

a. The D fish N [will Aux[hit V [the D chicken N [with P the D belt N]]]]

b. The D fish N [will Aux [[hit V the D chicken N ] [with P the D belt N]]]

Now suppose we ask the following question:

7.43

What will the fish hit the chicken with?

Note that this can only be a question about what hitting utensil was used, not about what was holding up the pants of the chicken who got hit. In other words, this question can only correspond to the grouping in (7.42b.), and not to the one in (7.42a.). Notice there is nothing wrong with the other meaning—we can express it by saying something like one of the following:

7.44

Asking about the chicken

a. The fish will hit the chicken with what?

b. What was the chicken that the fish will hit wearing?

c. For what x is it the case that the fish will hit the chicken and the chicken was with x?

The problem is just that the question in (7.43) cannot be interpreted as paralleling any of these questions in (7.44). One striking difference between questions (7.43) and (7.44a.) is the position of what. In (7.43) it is at the beginning of the sentence, whereas in (7.44a.) it is at the end. However, in both instances, what is interpreted as the noun phrase selected by the preposition with. In both cases, what replaces a NP constituent— a belt in (7.42a.b.), which is a sister of the preposition with. Clearly, the preposition with is the same in both (7.43) and (7.44a.). More specifically, in both (7.43) and (7.44a.) the preposition with selects a noun phrase that must follow the preposition. In (7.44a.) this noun phrase is where we expect it to be—it follows the preposition. However, in (7.43), the noun phrase selected by the preposition with does not show up in the expected place but at the beginning of the sentence.

How can we relate these two facts? On the one hand, what is selected by the preposition with and thus should be next to the preposition, and P R E D I C T I N G S Y N TAC T I C PAT T E R N S

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on the other hand, what occurs at the beginning of the sentence in spite of the fact that it is interpreted as the noun phrase selected by the preposition with.

We will assume that what in (7.43) occupies both positions at the same time, that there is a copy of what in each position. We will refer to these two positions as the base position and the derived position.

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