Practical Grammar 8

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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 exactly the f-structure (10) on p. 101 for (1). For sentence (2), you should obtain an f-structure which is identical to that of sentence (1), with the exception that the CLTYPE of (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!

Collecting everything we have done so far in one grammar

Exercise 8.2

  • Go to https://xlfg.labri.fr/.
  • Open the grammar Practical Grammar 7. Except for test sentences, it is empty.
  • Open xlfg again in a second browser tab by clicking on https://xlfg.labri.fr/.
  • Open your previous grammars in the second tab window and copy information from those grammars into Practical Grammar 7 in the first browser tab until the grammar returns the expected result for all test sentences.


Homework

For next week, read pages 102-113 in the textbook.