Last modified 18 April 2007
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Honor Code: For this assignment, you can discuss the assignment with students taking the class currently (no others), but only up until the time you begin to write answers on computer or on paper. From that point, work by yourself. What this means is, preliminary discussions with other students taking the course about the questions are OK, but once you start working on your first draft of the assignment, writing answers and parsing, you must work by yourself.
For all questions, you can use the Huddleston and Pullum (2005) textbook and the materials on our course website. But don't use syntax books or other reference materials, including the web, outside our textbook.
Submit the assignment, as all assignments, via WebCT, so that we can log the time of its submission. If you use handwritten trees and cannot get them up onto your file for submission to WebCT, submit the assignment without the trees but indicate "please see hardcopy" on the submission, and put a hardcopy in instructor's box on due date.
As a baby, it was readily apparent to her parents that she was special - she could sing before she could talk!
The above sentence, in traditional grammar, is generally considered either outright ungrammatical, or else at least an example of stylistically poor writing. What is it about the underlined constituent that is not optimal? How is it like and unlike cases of "dangling modifiers" that prescriptive grammarians often complain about?
Use the appropriate terminology of a descriptive grammarian/linguist.
Find all the structures you can that are licensed by the verbs in (a)-(d) above and construct an example sentence for each.
How do you find "all the structures you can"? Generally, the syntactic structures licensed by a verb are classified by the number and kind of complements that the verb takes, e.g. direct objects, nonfinite clauses of various types, finite subordinate clauses, etc. First specify a complement licensed, and then with it, name the structure that results from that particular complement, using the classifications provided in our book as follows. Repeat for each complement that occurs with a given verb until you have found all you can think of.
For canonical clause structures: use the classification on p. 77-78
For kinds of non-finite structures licensed by verbs: use the classification on p. 204
For subordinate clause complements: you need only determine
whether a verb licenses the declarative content clause type (of the four possible types on p. 175).
You can simply name this type of complement as a finite subordinate
clause (further specified as occurring with or without the subordinator that).
In other words, once you name the complement type licensed, you are well on the way to finding the name for the resulting syntactic structure that the verb appears in.
The following verb is partially done as an example:
know
1. Licenses direct objects. Clause structure: simple transitive clause.
Example: I know the answer.
2. Licenses finite subordinate clauses. Clause structure: main clause
plus finite subordinate clause introduced by that;
and similar structure in which that is omitted.
Examples:
She knew that she had done well on the exam.
She knew she had done well on the exam.
3. Licenses ... (any other licensed complements and consequent structure types you find.)
Again, use the conventions for parsing that have been emerging from analyses in the book and in class as we have looked more closely at trees. For example, use the category "Nominal" in your NPs if the nominal includes more than just the noun; use "Clause" instead of "S", etc.
© 2007 Suzanne Kemmer
Last modified 18 April 2007