Practical Grammar 8

Complement Clauses

Exercise 8.1 (based on section 5.1 of the textbook)

• Go to https://xlfg.labri.fr/.
• Open your latest grammar or start with a copy of Grammar5-Ex 7.3.
• Add the words in the following sentences:

(1) Oscar thinks that Sarah likes musicals
(2) Oscar enquires whether Sarah likes musicals

Implement the following:

1. that and whether belong to the part of speech C (= complementizer).
2. Complementizers head CPs.
3. CPs take two daughers: a C and an IP. The two daughters are co-heads of the CP.
4. You need to add a new VP rule which allows a VP to consist of a V and a CP. The CP bears the GF COMP.

• Make any further changes that are necessary to obtain the f-structure (10) on p. 101 for (1), with one exception: your grammar will not contain the information [CLTYPE DECL] in the main f-structure! For sentence (2), you should obtain an f-structure which is identical to that of sentence (1), with the exception that the CLTYPE of the COMP in (2) should be INTER.

Check what your grammar predicts for the following examples:

(3) *Oscar thinks whether Sarah likes musicals
(4) *Oscar enquires that Sarah likes musicals

If your grammar licenses these examples, then add information to it that makes it impossible to derive a well formed f-structure for them.

Hint: think about the function of each of the complementizers!

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