Practical Grammar 9

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Functional Control

In this unit, we will extend the grammar to license sentences with verbs like 'try' and 'seems' which have interesting properties.

try (Control verb)

Exercise 9.1 (based on section pages 102-103 and 108-110 of the textbook)

  • Go to https://xlfg.labri.fr/.
  • Create a new project and copy your previous grammar into your new project.
  • On the basis of pages 102-108 in the textbook, make all the additions to the grammar that are necessary to yield the following outputs for sentence (1):

(1) Ingrid tried to buy olives.

Ingrid-tried-to-buy-olives-cs.JPG     Ingrid-tried-to-buy-olives-fs.JPG

Implement the following grammatical assumptions:

  • 'to' (the infinitive marker): assume that it is marked [IM:+].
  • 'buy': [VFORM:INF]

Extended Coherence Condition [non-final version] (p. 138)

  • All governable functions present in an f-structure must occur in the value of a local PRED feature.
  • All functions that have a PRED value must have a theta role.

Make sure that your grammar makes the correct predictions for the sentences below:

(2) Ingrid buys olives
(3) *Ingrid tried buys olives

seem(Raising verb)

(4) Ingrid seemed to buy olives.


(2) Ingrid seemed to buy olives

Ingrid-seemed-to-buy-olives-csJPG.JPG     Ingrid-seemd-to-buy-olives-fs.JPG Ingrid-seemed-to-buy-olives-as.JPG