Syntax 1 Wiki: Week 2

This week, we'll be dealing with Parts of Speech and their distinctive features.
First, work through the following sections of the Wiki:

Words

Parts of Speech

Our online grammar uses the following 6 parts of speech:

Type	Full name	Tree symbol	Examples
n	noun	N	Lilly, she, her, I, me, him, we, us, it, cat, letter
v	verb	V	visit, like, will, to, see, saw, seen, seeing, seen
a	adjective	A	big, happy
p	preposition	P	to, of
d	determiner	D	the, a, those
c	complementizer	C	that

Features

The table above lists the following words as nouns: Lilly, she, her, I, me, him, it, cat, letter. Even though these words have much in common which distinguishes them from non-nouns (e.g. they can all refer to things in the world), there are also clearly some differences between them. Let us, for instance, check for some of these words whether they can serve as the subject of a main clause:

Subjects:

(1) Lilly danced.
(2) She danced.
(3) *Her danced.
(4) I danced.
(5) *Me danced.
(6) *Him danced.
(7) It danced.

We see that the following words can act as subjects: Lilly, she, I, it.

Let us now test what happens when we try to use these words as direct objects and objects of prepositions:

Direct objects:

(8) Fido likes Lilly.
(9) *Fido likes she.
(10) Fido likes her.
(11) *Fido likes I.
(12) Fido likes me.
(13) Fido likes him.
(14) Fido likes it.

Objects of prepositions:

(15) Fido talks about Lilly.
(16) *Fido talks about she.
(17) Fido talks about her.
(18) *Fido talks about I.
(19) Fido talks about me.
(20) Fido talks about him.
(21) Fido talks about it.

This data shows that the following words can act as objects: Lilly, her, me, him, it.

So we see that not all nouns behave alike. Some can occur only in subject position (I, he, she), some only in object position (her, him, me), and a third group can serve both as subject and as object (Lilly, it). When we look at contrasting pairs such as I-me, he-him, she-her, it is clear that the form of the word decides its use in sentences: the first form in each pair can act only as a subject and the second one only as an object. Following traditional grammar, we will account for this as follows:

1. English nouns belong to one of two grammatical cases: nominative and accusative.
2. Only nominative nouns can act as subjects and only accusative nouns can act as objects.

This accounts for the words that can only serve in one function. But what about the words like Lilly and it which can equally well act as subjects and objects? The answer is simple. We will say that these words can be both nominative and accusative!

Another noteworthy aspect of the observations above is that they only apply to words of part of speech noun. For verbs, adjectives, etc. it simply makes no sense to ask what grammatical case they carry.

This discussion leads us to introduce the concept of a FEATURE and its possible values. We will say that the part of speech n has the feature CASE with the possible values nom(inactive) and acc(usative). Moreover, we will require that whenever a word belongs to part of speech n, it must have the feature CASE and the feature must have one of the possible case values. Using the tree label notation from the exercises and the online grammar, we thus might describe the seven words we tested above as follows:

(22) Lilly, N,[CASE case]
(23) she, N, [CASE nom]
(24) her, N, [CASE acc]
(25) I, N [CASE nom]
(26) me, N, [CASE acc]
(27) him, N, [CASE acc]
(28) it, N, [CASE case]

Example (24) can be used to illustrate how each of these lines is to be understood. It says three things: a. the word under discussion is her, b. the word belongs to the part of speech N and c. for the noun feature CASE the word carries the value acc. The other words where the value of the feature is either nom or acc are interpreted in the same way. This leaves the words Lilly and it in (22) and (28): [CASE case] is our way of saying that a word is compatible with any possible specific case in English. Since there are only the two cases nom and acc, this means that (22) is a short way of writing the following two lines instead:

(22a) Lilly, N,[CASE nom]
(22a) Lilly, N,[CASE acc].

The three values for the feature CASE are nom, acc, and case. Since these symbols can describe nothing other than the feature CASE, we might as well simplify our life and write (22)-(28) in the following shorter form from here on:

(22') Lilly, N[case]
(23') she, N[nom]
(24') her, N[acc]
(25') I, N[nom]
(26') me, N[acc]
(27') him, N[acc]
(28') it, N[case]

Go to the online grammar With this, we return to the case values of the nouns. Click on five or six different nouns and make sure you understand why the grammar displays the case value it does for each word.

Now answer the following questions:

a. What is the case value of names (e.g. Lilly?)
b. What is the case value of common nouns (e.g. cat)

The feature VFORM

Many verbs also have more than one form. For instance, we find not only see, but also sees, saw, seen, and seeing.

Verb form	Full name	Examples
fin	finite	sees, is, will, dances, dance (non-third person singular), danced (past tense)
base	base form (= bare infinitive)	see, be, dance, give
presp	present participle	seeing, being, dancing, giving
perfp	perfect participle	seen, been, danced, given

Words and their features

See all words, their features and corresponding values

POS	Full name	FEATURE	Value
n	noun	AGR CASE	Person: 1(fst), 2(sec), 3(thd) Number: s(sg), p(pl) nom, acc, case
v	verb	VFORM AGR AUX	fin non-fin: base, presp, perfp Person: 1(fst) 2(sec) 3(thd) Number: s(sg) p(pl) auxiliary:+ -
a	adjective
p	preposition	FORM	at, for, in, to,...
d	determiner	AGR	Person: 1(fst) 2(sec) 3(thd) Number: s(sg)p(pl)
c	complementizer

1) Do the Exercises on Parts of Speech.
2) Do the following theoretical exercises on parts of speech and their features.

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