Exercise 1- UTAH
Task 1- Give derivations, along the lines of that given in the text, for the vPs in the following two sentences:
(1) Romeo sent letters to Juliet.
(2) Romeo sent Juliet letters.
Task 2- Explain whether the UTAH correctly predicts the interpretation for these sentences.
There have been a number of proposals in the literature about how to reconcile the UTAH and these two constructions. See the Further reading section.
Exercise 2- Pronouns and c-command
This exercise and the next give you some practice with incorporating the notion of c-command into syntactic arguments. You are already familiar with the Pronoun Generalization.
(1) The Pronoun Generalization
A pronoun cannot be co-referential with another pronoun.
Part A-
Task 1- For each of the following sentences, say whether the grammaticality judgment given is predicted by the Pronoun Generalization, on the assumption that the words in bold are co-referential, and explain why you think the judgment is predicted or not:
(2) Anson kissed him.
(3) Moya played football with her
(4) 'She intended Jenny to be there
Part B-
Task 2- Now assume the following revised generalization, and explain how it is empirically superior:
(5) The Pronoun Generalization (revised)
A pronoun cannot be co-referential with another NP.
Part C-
Task 3- the revised generalization, however, does not predict the following cases. Briefly explain why.
(6) Moya's football team loved her.
(7) That picture of Jenny in a rubber dress doesn't flatter her.
(8) Anson's hen nibbled his ear.
The sentences which are not predicted by the Pronoun Generalization are, of course, reminiscent in their structure to those sentences which caused us to revise the Reflexive Generalization. If we revise the Pronoun Generalization in the same way, we can capture these data:
(9) The Pronoun Generalization (revised)
A pronoun cannot be co-referential with a c-commanding NP.
Task 4- Show, using replacement and movement tests, that this revised generalization makes the correct predictions for the problematic sentences.
Exercise 3- R-expressions and c-command
Part A-
Task 1- the new Pronoun Generalization does not predict the correct judgments for example (4) above or for the following sentences. Explain why.
(1) He liked Anson
(2) They shaved David and Anson
Part B-
Examples like these have prompted linguists to propose another generalization for referring expressions, like proper names. Referring expressions (often abbreviated as R-expressions) have their own reference and appear to be unable to be co-referential with any c-commanding antecedent. Here is a simplified version of that third generalization:
(3) The R-Expression Generalization
An R-expression cannot be co-referential with a c-commanding NP.
Task 2- Explain how the full set of judgments from this and the previous exercise is now explained by the three generalizations.
Part C-
We will now rephrase these three generalizations in terms of another concept: binding. We shall define binding as follows:
(4) A binds B if A c-commands B and A and B are co-referential. We can now state our three generalizations as follows:
(5) a. A reflexive must be hound.
b. A pronoun cannot be bound.
c. An R-expression cannot be bound.
Task 3- Using the terms binding, reflexive, pronoun, and R-expression, explain how the following sentences fall under the Binding Generalizations or not.
(6) His hen loves Anson.
(7) ?Anson saw Anson. (Assume that this is basically OK)
(8) That picture of her flatters Jenny.
(9) 'She liked Moya's football
(10) Moya said she liked football.
(11) She said Moya liked football we will return to the contrast between (10) and (11) in later chapters.
Exercise 4- NPls
Part A-
Task 1- Explain why (2) is problematic for the NPI Generalization and repeated here:
(1) The NPI Generalization (revised) NPIs must be c-commanded by a negative clement.
(2) No one's mother had baked anything.
Part B-
Task 2- Using NP1s, make up examples with three-place predicates, along the lines of the examples with reflexives in the text, which construct an argument for or against the VP-shell hypothesis.
Make sure you check the judgements on your examples with at least four native speakers of English.
Exercise 5- Derivations
In the text, we saw a full example derivation for a vP. You should use this as a model to construct similar derivations for the vPs in the following sentences'
(1) Anson gave Flutter to Jenny.
(2) Julie filed letters to herself.
(3) Mary fell. (Remember that fell is unaccusative.)
(4) Mary ran. (Remember that ran is unergative.)