Overview

In this chapter, we take a close look at the syntax of subjects. So far, we have assumed that subjects occupy the specifier position within TP and remain in situ (except where the subject is an interrogative operator which undergoes operator movement, e.g. in sentences like Who did he say was coming?). However, in this chapter we argue that subjects originate internally within VP, and subsequently move to spec-TP for checking purposes (an assumption known as the VP-internal subject hypothesis). We look at the syntax of so-called raising predicates like seem, and examine how (and why) they differ from control predicates like try. In addition, we look at the syntax of subjects in passive sentences. Finally, we look at the nature of the A movement operation by which subjects are raised up (in a successive cyclic fashion) into the spec-TP position which they occupy in the superficial syntactic structure of the sentence.

VP-internal subject hypothesis

We begin by looking at the structure of expletive sentences such as (1) below:

1. (a) There is nobody living there

2. (b) There is someone knocking at the door

3. (c) There are several patients waiting to see the doctor

Sentence (1a) contains two different occurrences of there. The second (bold-printed) there is a locative pronoun paraphraseable as ‘in that place’, and contains the diphthong /eə/; the first (italicized) there is an expletive (i.e. dummy or pleonastic) constituent which contains the unstressed vowel /ə/ and does not have a locative interpretation (i.e. it is not paraphraseable as ‘in that place’), but rather has no intrinsic reference (as we see from the fact that its reference can't be questioned – hence the ungrammaticality of *Where is nobody living there?).

So far, we have assumed that syntactic structures are derived by a series of merger operations. We now go on to argue that derivations may involve not only merger, but also movement operations. In this chapter, we look at two main types of movement operation, one which affects auxiliaries in present-day English, and another which affected verbs in earlier stages of English. We shall argue that both types of movement involve essentially the same head movement operation, involving movement from one head position to another. We begin by looking at the syntax of so-called auxiliary inversion in English.

In chapters 3 and 4, we saw that complementizers are positioned in front of subjects in the clauses they introduce. More specifically, we suggested that complementizers head a separate layer of functional superstructure in clauses, which we termed a complementizer phrase (= CP), with the head C (= COMP) position of CP being filled by complementizers like that/for/if. However, complementizers are not the only kinds of constituent which can precede subjects in clauses. After all, in our brief discussion of auxiliary inversion in chapter 1, we saw that auxiliaries can also precede subjects in inversion structures (e.g. in yes–no questions such as Can you help me?). In this respect, inverted auxiliaries seems to resemble complementizers – as the following (love-struck, soap-operesque) dialogue illustrates

1. (1) SPEAKER A: Honey-buns, there's something I wanted to ask you

2. SPEAKER B: What, sweetie-pie?

3. SPEAKER A: If you will marry me

4. SPEAKER B (pretending not to hear): What d'you say, darlin'?

5. SPEAKER A: Will you marry me?

This book is essentially an abridged version of my Syntactic Theory and the Structure of English: a Minimalist Approach. Although much of the text of this shorter book is taken verbatim from various sections of the longer one, the shorter book is intended to be used as a self-contained introduction to syntax, and as such has been designed with a number of specific criteria in mind.

One is that lengthy tomes are simply impractical to use as coursebooks on short courses where only a limited number of hours/weeks are available: Joe Emonds once remarked to me that a student complained to him about my 625-page Transformational Grammar book that ‘This is the third syntax course I've been on where we only got halfway through the coursebook by the end of the course.’ The main text of the present book is around a third the length of the main text of Transformational Grammar and is designed explicitly to be used on short syntax courses. So, there's no excuse for not getting through all of it!

A second consideration which I have borne in mind is that students taking short introductory syntax courses want a general overview of key theoretical concepts and descriptive devices used in contemporary work in the 1990s; they do not want (nor is it realistic to give them) a historical account of how earlier work in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s led up to (or compares with) current work.

In this chapter, we look rather more closely at the syntax of subjects. So far, we have assumed that subjects occupy the specifier position within IP and remain in situ (except where the subject is an interrogative operator which undergoes operator movement, e.g. in sentences like Who did he say was coming?). However, we shall now argue that subjects originate in the specifier position within VP, and are subsequently raised to spec-IP for checking purposes by a movement operation known as (subject) raising.

Let's begin by looking at the structure of expletive sentences such as (1) below:

1. (1) (a) There is nobody living there

2. (b) There is someone knocking at the door

3. (c) There axe several patients waiting to see the doctor

Sentence (Ia) contains two different occurrences of there. The second (bold-printed) there is a locative pronoun paraphraseable as ‘in that place’, and contains the diphthong /eə/; the first (italicized) there is an expletive (i.e. dummy or pleonastic) constituent which contains the unstressed vowel /ə/ and does not have a locative interpretation (i.e. it is not paraphraseable as ‘in that place’), but rather has no intrinsic reference (as we see from the fact that its reference can't be questioned – hence the ungrammaticality of *Where is nobody living there?).

Overview

In the previous chapter, we looked at the way in which the grammatical properties of words can be described in terms of grammatical categories or grammatical features. In this chapter, we turn to address the rather different question of the ways in which words can be combined together to form phrases and sentences, and we look at how we can represent the structure of the phrases and sentences thereby formed.

Forming phrases

To put our discussion on a concrete footing, let's consider how an elementary two-word phrase such as that produced by speaker B in the following mini-dialogue is formed:

1. SPEAKER A: What's the government planning to do?

2. SPEAKER B: Privatize hospitals

As speaker B's utterance illustrates, the simplest way of forming a phrase is by combining two words together: for example, by combining the word privatize with the word hospitals in (1), we form the phrase privatize hospitals.

An important question to ask, however, is the following: ‘When two words combine together to form a phrase, what grammatical properties does the resulting phrase have, and how are they determined?’ There is clear evidence that the grammatical properties of phrases are determined by one of the two words in the phrase. For example, when we combine a verb like privatize with a noun like hospitals, the resulting phrase privatize hospitals seems to have verbal (= verblike) rather than nominal (= nounlike) properties.

Overview

In the previous chapter, we saw that the structure dependence principle determines that all grammatical operations in natural language are category-based (so that any word-based operation will apply to whole categories of words rather than to specific individual words). In this chapter, we provide further evidence in support of this conclusion, and argue that a principled description of the grammar of any language (the language chosen for illustrative purposes being Modern Standard English) requires us to recognize that all words in the language belong to a restricted set of grammatical categories. We look at the main categories found in English and explore their nature, arguing that categories are composite elements, built up of sets of grammatical features.

Morphological evidence

A natural question to ask at this point is: ‘What does it mean to say that words belong to grammatical categories?’ We can define a grammatical category in the following way:

(1) A grammatical category is a class of expressions which share a common set of grammatical properties.

For example, by saying that words like boy, cow, hand, idea, place, team, etc. belong to the grammatical category noun, what we are saying is that they all share certain grammatical properties in common: e.g. they have a plural form (ending in the suffix +s), they can all be premodified by the, and so forth. Likewise, by saying that words such as see, know, like, understand, write, appear, etc. belong to the grammatical category verb, what we imply is that they too have certain grammatical properties in common (e.g. they can take the progressive +ing suffix, they can occur after infinitival to, etc.).

The aim of this book is to provide an intensive introduction to recent work in syntactic theory (more particularly, to key concepts which are presupposed in works written within the broad framework of the minimalist program in the version outlined in Chomsky 1995b). There are six main features which mark this book out as different from other introductions to syntax currently available.

The first is that it does not presuppose any background knowledge of syntactic theory: it is suitable for use with true beginners, and does not presuppose that students have already done a course on generative syntax (though it is also suitable for false beginners who have already taken a course on an earlier model of syntax, and want to learn about more recent work).

The second is that it does not adopt a historical approach, or presuppose any historical knowledge (for example, there is no discussion of earlier work in the 1980s government and binding paradigm). Rather (for the most part), it deals directly with 1990s work within the minimalist program.

The third is that cross-linguistic variation is illustrated in terms of different varieties of English (e.g. Belfast English, Jamaican Creole, Child English, Shakespearean English, etc.), rather than in terms of different languages. Hence it does not make the unrealistic assumption that the reader knows (for example) Spanish, German, Arabic, Chinese and Chuckchee.

Overview

In the previous chapter, we looked at a particular kind of movement operation found in English, called head movement. In this chapter, we look at a very different kind of movement operation, known as operator movement because it applies to expressions which contain an (e.g. negative or interrogative) operator of some kind. Our discussion in the text will be concerned solely with interrogative operators (though we shall look at other types of operator construction in the exercises).

Wh-operators

To get our discussion underway, consider the syntax of the following wh-questions (i.e. questions containing an interrogative wh-word):

1. (a) What languagescan you speak?

2. (b) Which roadshould we take?

3. (c) Wherewere you going?

4. (d) Whohave they arrested?

Each of the sentences in (1) contains an (italicized) inverted auxiliary occupying the head C position of CP, preceded by a (bold-printed) interrogative expression. Each of the bold-printed pre-auxiliary phrases contains an interrogative operator (viz. what?, which?, where? or who?). Expressions containing an operator are – for obvious reasons – called operator expressions; hence what languages?, which road?, where? and who? are all (interrogative) operator expressions in (la–d).

It seems clear that each of the operator expressions in (1) functions as the complement of the verb at the end of the sentence. One piece of evidence leading to this conclusion comes from the fact that each of the examples in (1) has a paraphrase in which the operator expression occupies the canonical (i.e. ‘typical’) complement position after the relevant verb: cf.

1. (a) You can speak what languages?

2. (b) We should take which road?

In the previous chapter, we concluded that the structure dependence principle determines that all grammatical operations in natural language are category-based (i.e. apply to whole categories of words or phrases rather than to individual expressions). In this chapter, we provide further evidence in support of this conclusion, and argue that a principled description of the grammar of any language (the language chosen for illustrative purposes being Standard English) requires us to recognize that all words in the language belong to a restricted set of grammatical categories.

A natural question to ask at this point is: ‘What does it mean to say that words belong to grammatical categories?’ We can define a grammatical category in the following way:

1. (1) A grammatical category is a class of expressions which share a common set of grammatical properties.

For example, by saying that words like boy, cow, hand, idea, place, team, etc. belong to the grammatical category noun, what we are saying is that they all share certain grammatical properties in common: e.g. the morphological property of having a plural form (ending in the suffix +s), and the syntactic property of being able to be premodified by the. As is implicit here, the bulk of the evidence in support of postulating that words belong to categories is morphosyntactic (i.e. morphological and/or syntactic) in nature.

Overview

So far, the analysis we have presented has assumed that syntactic structures are derived by a series of binary merger operations. We now go on to argue that derivations may involve not only merger, but also movement operations. In this chapter, we look at two similar types of movement operation, one which affects auxiliaries in Modern English, and another which affected verbs in earlier stages of English. We shall argue that both types of movement involve essentially the same head movement operation, involving movement from one head position to another. We begin by looking at the syntax of so-called auxiliary inversion in English.

Auxiliary inversion

In chapters 3–5, we saw that complementizers are positioned in front of subjects in the clauses they introduce. More specifically, we suggested that complementizers head a separate layer of functional superstructure in clauses, which we termed a complementizer phrase (= CP), with the head C (= COMP) position of CP being filled by complementizers like that/for/if. However, complementizers are not the only kinds of constituent which can precede subjects in clauses. After all, in our brief discussion of auxiliary inversion in §1.6, we saw that auxiliaries can also precede subjects in inversion structures (e.g. in yes–no questions such as Can you help me?).