The Syntax and Morphology of English Verbs: Patterns that Matter 9783110734379, 9783110738711

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Joseph Embley Emonds The Syntax and Morphology of English Verbs

Studies in Generative Grammar

Editors Norbert Corver Harry van der Hulst Founding editors Jan Koster Henk van Riemsdijk

Volume 147

Joseph Embley Emonds

The Syntax and Morphology of English Verbs Patterns that Matter

ISBN 978-3-11-073871-1 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-073437-9 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-073441-6 ISSN 0167-4331 Library of Congress Control Number: 2021952645 Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. © 2022 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston Typesetting: Integra Software Services Pvt. Ltd. Printing and binding: CPI books GmbH, Leck www.degruyter.com

I dedicate the results and efforts of this book to my partner of a quarter century, Ludmila Veselovská. She has provided tremendous intellectual and personal support over the years, long before this project took conscious shape, steadfastly continuing to this day. Lida has published three authoritative books and dozens of research papers on Czech (her first love) and English. Her influence on the contents of this book is especially strong in Chapters 1 and 5.

Acknowledgments Text editor: Rosemarie Ostler. This entire project has been planned and executed with Rosemarie Ostler, formerly Whitney. She has been throughout what can be termed the “Text Editor” of the book. She has played a central role in everything from the initial organization of the subject matter to editorial rewriting and the details of formatting. Herself holder of a doctorate in theoretical linguistics and author of six books on linguistics, she has steered me away from tangents and over- or under-attention to side issues, and has helped craft the presentation of arguments in a more straightforward style. Where the main line of thought was obscure, she has been greatly helpful in bringing it to light. And as a native speaker of a different dialect of Standard American than my own, she has been invaluable in confirming the acceptability judgments throughout, which surprisingly to both of us, seem to diverge only in the last sections of chapter 3, where they are duly commented on. So Rosemarie, my heartfelt appreciation for the intense labor expended in bringing this book out of the shadows into a Realis state. Fellow linguists. As is generally the case, this book could not have been written without the help and steadfast encouragement of the author’s close friends and research colleagues. As so many have contributed to it in some way, I limit mention here to those with the strongest personal ties, and to whom I am deeply grateful. I especially want to thank a group of intimate linguistic friends that have provided unflagging support and inspiration, not least because of their own continued devotion and contributions to the shared field of formal syntax. These include José Deulofeu, Jan Terje Faarlund, Jamal Ouhalla, Lida Veselovská (to whom the book is dedicated), and Jurgen Weissenborn. The personal support of each has been concretely expressed both at a distance, but also in the form of exchanging many visits in person, not always easy to arrange. Closer to home, Lida has very effectively created an atmosphere conducive to research by establishing and attracting scholars to the bi-annual Olomouc Linguistics Conference. (Olinco). Without their confidence and enduring interest in my research efforts, they would have long ago faltered and fallen short of completion. And besides support for linguistic endeavors, I feel our many good times together have recharged my professional energy, so that I cannot really separate the ties that bind us. May they be ever stronger, and thank you all so much! More broadly, I am also indebted to the young researchers in formal syntax at my now home institution, Palacky University in Olomouc. They have re-invigorated my linguistic energies, and most are mentioned and cited in various chapters for relevant contributions. I have profited extensively from our interactions during and after their studies at Palacky and am proud to continue associating with such a fine “new crop” of scholars, whose contributions have additionally https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110734379-202

VIII 

 Acknowledgments

substantially enhanced the bibliography. I only hope this rather old weed is still capable of some growth in our shared Moravian linguistic garden. The publisher. Finally, I thank the series editor Norbert Corver for welcoming my submission and for steering it through the editorial review process. And I am very appreciative of the careful and detailed commentary of two reviewers, and hope my revisions have done justice to their suggestions and proposed clarifications. Kirstin Börgen and Mervin Ebenezer have done excellent work from start to finish in overseeing the editing and production, preventing problems even before they arose. March 1, 2022

Contents Acknowledgments 

 VII

 1 Introduction  The emphasis on formalizing lexical entries 

 5

 8 1 English modals and be are not irregular verbs   8 1.1 English auxiliaries   9 1.2 Diagnostics for the category verb   9 1.2.1 The place of verbs in clausal structure   11 1.2.2 The regularity of verbal inflections   13 1.2.3 The interpretive core of the category verb    16 1.3 The nineteen non-verbal auxiliaries of English      1.3.1 Structural position of the category I 17  18 1.3.2 The large membership and types of features of V    18 1.3.2.1 VP is a sister to I   19 1.3.2.2 I is a head above VP   19 1.3.3 Meaning of the category I   21 1.3.4 The syntactic “NICE properties” of I    23 1.4 Interactions between I and V   24 1.4.1 Affix Movement: The effects of Realis (IØ) on V       1.4.2 The finite copula 28  30 1.4.3 The pros of English be-raising  1.4.4 The cons of be-movement: finite copulas as Alternative  33 Realizations   36 1.5 The two truly verbal auxiliaries of English   37 1.5.1 Verbs in I as functional category heads  1.5.2 Bleached Nouns and Verbs as functional category heads   40 1.5.3 Do-support: A V in the position of IØ   42 1.6 Methodological conclusions and commentary   42 1.6.1 Generative conclusions on clausal structure  1.6.2 The myth of auxiliaries as verbs: The legacy of “parts of  43 speech”   44 1.6.3 The perennial return to grammatical square 1  2 2.1 2.2

 46 The single English Past morpheme –ed / -en  The location of ±PAST in English clause structure   48 Unifying the past suffixes –en and –ed 

 46

 38

X  2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.6.1 2.6.2 2.7 2.7.1 2.7.2 2.7.3 2.7.4 2.7.5 2.7.6 3 3.1 3.1.1 3.1.2 3.1.3 3.2 3.3 3.3.1 3.3.2 3.3.3 3.4 3.5 3.5.1 3.5.2 3.6 3.7 3.8 3.9

 Contents

 51 The canonical positions of verbal features in trees  Selecting finite past forms (“second principal part”) of English  54 verbs  Selecting active past participles (“third principal part”) of English  57 verbs   60 How and why many English verbs continue to be irregular      Lexical entries and structures for irregular verbs 60  63 Contribution of irregular forms to syntactic Economy   67 The unique auxiliary have with the participle   67 The category of the Active Past Participle      The English perfect auxiliary 68  71 The contrast between the past and the present perfect  Insertion contexts for have in I in current English:  74 Had better/ had best  Insertion contexts for have in I in current English: The collocation  75 have got   77 The factor predicting when have is in I and when it is in V  Regular inflections and contractions: Limits on grammatical  80 irregularity   80 What is a “regular form”?   81 Distributional limits on irregular inflections      Local vs. regular inflections 83  86 More regular and irregular inflections in Czech and French   87 Semantic opacity in local inflections   89 Contractions and clitics are fully regular inflections      English contractions 89  92 French verbal clitics   94 Structurally prohibited irregular fusions   96 A further restriction on irregular local inflection  Dividing the English lexicon: Primary vs. secondary  97 vocabulary   98 Semantics and morphophonology of the primary vocabulary      Irregular forms must be in the primary vocabulary 99  102 The syntax of the primary vocabulary: “Phrasal verbs”  The syntax of the primary vocabulary: Indirect objects  108 without Ps  The applicative inflection: A Nordic ghost in English  110 grammar   114 Conclusions about the divided lexicon 

Contents 

4 4.1 4.2 4.2.1 4.2.2 4.2.3 4.2.4 4.3 4.3.1 4.3.2 4.3.3 4.4 4.4.1 4.4.2 4.5 4.5.1 4.5.2 4.5.3 4.5.4 4.6 4.6.1 4.6.2 4.7

5 5.1 5.1.1 5.1.2 5.1.3 5.2 5.3 5.3.1 5.3.2 5.3.3 5.4 5.4.1 5.4.2 5.4.3

 XI

 117 Polyfunctional –ing: Can any other language match it?   117 Morphosyntactic properties of English non-finite clauses      Three structures for English semi-clauses 119  120 Bare Infinitives as incomplete projections of V   121 The external structure of to-infinitives   124 The external structures of participles and gerunds      English semi-clauses as Extended Projections 127  130 What is this thing spelled –ing?   130 Lexical uses of –ing in derivational morphology     132 Productive uses of –ing in derivational morphology     Productive uses of –ing as inflectional morphology 134 English active participles V+ing: Their distribution  137 and properties   137 Where and why economy prefers participles   139 Participial adjuncts and their infinitival overrides   141 Subjects and the extended projection principle   141 Structural subjects of semi clauses   144 Internal subjects of gerunds     145 Internal subjects of infinitives  147 Status of the small clause hypothesis   148 Theta relatedness and the anti-transitivity criterion      Structural examples of anti-transitivity 150  152 Larger structures required by anti-transitivity  Conclusion: The role of participles and gerunds in  154 grammar   156 Gerunds vs. infinitives: Less alike than they look   157 Differences between gerunds and infinitives   158 The DP structure of gerunds    160 The PP structure of infinitives   161 The minimal VPs of control and raising   164 Misleading similarities of gerunds and infinitives   167 Contrasting distributions of gerunds and infinitives      Gerunds are noun phrases 167  169 Verbal clauses: Not in the DP subject position   172 Initial verbal clauses as root constructions   173 Gerund objects vs. verbal clause complements      So-called subordinating conjunctions 173  175 Verbal clauses can’t precede indirect objects   178 Why gerunds are ill-formed as possessives 

XII  5.5 5.5.1 5.5.2 5.6 5.7 5.7.1 5.7.2 5.8 5.9 6 6.1 6.1.1 6.1.2 6.1.3 6.1.4 6.2 6.3 6.3.1 6.3.2 6.3.3 6.3.4 6.4 6.4.1 6.4.2 6.5 6.5.1 6.5.2 6.5.3 6.5.4 6.5.5

 Contents

 179 Independent diagnostics that only gerunds are DPs      Coordination with lexical NPs 179  180 Cleft focus position as a diagnostic for DP   182 Expletive chains: Interpreting clauses as DP arguments   187 Additional features in verbal clauses or gerunds   188 When is case available to semi-clause complements?      Features incompatible with selection of DP gerunds 189 Semi-clause complements that are neither subjects nor  194 objects   199 Summary and implications   201 English passive structures and the passive participle  The analytic passives of English and their  201 dethematized subjects  Analytic and periphrastic characteristics of English  201 passives   204 Structural Subjects across categories   205 Suppression of active subjects (= Dethematization)     207 Excess predictive content of the definition of Subject The relation between English passives and transitive  208 verbs   212 Verbal vs. adjectival passives: distinct yet closely related     213 An interpretive difference: Ongoing vs. completed activity  215 Selection of -en by different classes of V   216 Adjectival pre-modification in (only) adjectival passives  Agent phrases in passives: Sructurally obligatory vs.  218 optional  Only verbal passives exhibit the full internal structure  221 of VPs   222 Passive structures and case assignment   224 Verb–object idioms limited to verbal passives   225 English indirect passives   228 Indirect passives are verbal passives   230 Indirect passives are not “embedded direct passives”     231 Indirect passives are not DP-internal reduced relatives Indirect passives are not direct passives inside small  232 clauses   234 Deriving verbal passives from AP structures 

Contents 

 235 Motivating the Syntacticon component  The hallmark of closed class items: Unique syntactic  236 behavior  Morphemes uninterpreted at the LF or PF interfaces 

6.6 6.6.1 6.6.2 6.7 7 7.1 7.2 7.3

Explaining the scope and properties of verbal passives 

 240  242

 244 The empirical basis of theoretical advance  The chapters on finite forms: Formalizing salient empirical  244 differences  The chapters on non-finite forms: Predicting their  247 distributions   249 Valedictory 

References 

 253

Index of cited authors 

 261

Index of definitions, principles, tables and trees  Index of English lexical entries 

 267

 263

 XIII

Introduction English is the world’s most studied and analyzed language in both formal and informal approaches, and undoubtedly, its verbal system is a core component of its grammar, and to boot a quite complex one. The English verbal system is the focus of this book, and here is analyzed and exemplified in the framework of current generative grammar. The approach, however, is based more on where data patterns seem to lead us than on widely accepted existing analyses that in my view are neither empirically well supported nor suggestive of new insights. Perhaps surprisingly, there currently exists no detailed and theoretically integrated generative description of the overall verbal system of English, including the language-particular aspects needed to truly characterize it and set it off from others. While there are massive practical and reference grammars of English (some cited below), often even partly inspired by (usually unacknowledged) generative sources, they treat verbal forms under traditional taxonomic and atheoretical headings. They don’t attempt to construct a unified perspective. Nor do generative analyses, either in research monographs or textbooks, provide anywhere near a complete picture of this verbal system, one based on empirical arguments and integrated into a single formal framework. Why this unsatisfying and fragmented state of affairs? Since the mid-eighties, generative research has pretty much avoided any detailed focus on formalizing language-particular aspects of syntax, such as was found earlier in Chomsky’s Syntactic Structures and Logical Structure of Linguistic Theory (1957; 1975), Kayne’s French Syntax (1975), Emonds’s Transformational Approach to English Syntax (1976), Burzio’s Italian Syntax (1981), and Koopman’s Syntax of Verbs (1984). Since the core of most languages’ grammatical systems is precisely the verb, with its modifiers and argument phrases (as evidenced in the above works), and since these systems vary across languages, this means that more recent generative research has left to the side some central parts of the world’s grammars. The present volume aims to rectify this lack by combining empirically adequate and theoretically interesting analyses of this verbal core of English. There are certainly many specialists in English grammar, both in academia and in the wider world of language study, who want something between practical exercises and theory-based treatises. This monograph speaks to that need. It proposes a data-based approach to English grammatical analysis that is rare in recent decades. It further argues that replacing several established beliefs about English verbal forms leads to new and previously unsuspected theoretical conclusions – for most readers, the book contains some striking surprises. Moreover, because almost every advanced linguistic researcher today is familiar with English, this https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110734379-001

2 

 Introduction

volume also has much to offer to a wider audience of specialists who concentrate on other languages. The book has six main chapters, each focusing on a different aspect of the English verbal system. The first three deal with finite forms and the second three with non-finite forms. All chapters develop needed concepts starting from a minimal theoretical background, and build on previous chapters. The chapter topics in order of presentation are as follows: (i) Chapter 1. Agreeing verbal forms, emphasizing distinctions between verbs and auxiliaries. Chomsky’s idea in Syntactic Structures that English auxiliaries are not verbs is sharpened and extended, with a focus on empirical justifications for a separate “finite” syntactic category labelled I. (ii) Chapter 2, Common properties between two ways of reporting past events in English, with evidence that a verb’s second and third “principal parts” (so frequently identical) are not different morphemes, as heretofore almost universally assumed, but allomorphs of a single Past in different syntactic contexts. (iii) Chapter 3. A sharp division between essentially fully regular and highly irregular inflections. Previous analyses have not provided a theoretical basis for separating –s, –ing and regular contractions from inflection that can be highly irregular, such as past tenses and noun plurals. (iv) Chapter 4. The structural and empirical differences between participles and gerunds, and how these play a central role, along with Principles of Economy, in determining which non-finite complements appear in a given syntactic context.1 (v) Chapter 5. The contrasts in distribution, structure and meaning between infinitives and gerunds. The structural analysis here explains a wealth of newly described syntactic patterns overlooked or downplayed in both traditional and generative treatments. (vi) Chapter 6. Verbal vs. adjectival passives, and a previously unrecognized English indirect passive. Arguments against the widely accepted view that only verbal passives are syntactic, which has led to accounts that obscure both the similarities and the differences. Each chapter additionally proposes and supports one or two central ideas that will be for most readers novel and challenging. The book therefore constitutes a

1 Some current handbooks, considering only surface forms, downplay this distinction. But chapter 4 will argue that the distinct paradigms of participles and gerunds show how Economy of Representation uses their different status to choose among non-finite structures.

Introduction 

 3

fresh approach to English grammar, and is not simply an improved or simplified composite summary of existing analyses, whether traditional or generative.2 In analyzing these topics in often novel terms, we still find that several generative hypotheses, especially if refined in directions suggested by new data, are even better supported than generally felt. These hypotheses include: a. A restricted and plausibly universal system of just six heads for maximal phrases: N, V, A, P, D, I; b. A single fully formalized and unified principle for morphosyntactic locality;3 c. Borer’s (1984) Conjecture regarding the lexical basis of particular grammars; d. Chomsky’s (1991) Economy of Representation, which chooses among competing derivations; e. A drastically revised Theta Criterion, requiring a new term, Anti-transitivity (of Theta-Relatedness); f. When properly understood as to its domain of application, the Case Filter; and g. Åfarli’s (1989) carefully defined “essential properties of the passive”. Each of these hypotheses will be made fully explicit and empirically supported as the need for them arises. A reviewer of an earlier draft has expressed concern about this book being aimed at two distinct target audiences, defined as follows (I am citing): (a) students who want to learn about the grammar of the English verbal system from a theoretically informed perspective, perhaps with the idea of the book being used in classes on the structure of English; (b) theoretical syntacticians, including scholars who specialize in languages other than English who will be interested in the original proposals made here, which depart in many cases from accepted orthodoxy. However, I think both audiences can be targeted, in accord with a long-standing tradition including Bloomfield, Sapir, Chomsky (e.g. Language and Mind), etc. So this volume is written with both (a) and (b) in mind as possible readers.

2 Among other things, this volume rejects some views often uncritically adopted from traditional grammar, such as the ideas that auxiliaries are simply verbs with variable special properties, that English finite pasts and past participles are distinct morphemes, that morphological irregularity is not subject to synchronic limits, and that gerunds and infinitives are close to interchangeable. Such grammatical hand-me-downs virtually guarantee the sterility of research still incorporating them. 3 This general locality principle in this work is called “Alternative Realization.” It is introduced in section 1.4.1 and multiply justified in many different sections. It bears some similarity to “Head to Head Movement” (Baker 1988), but the two are clearly differentiated in chapter 3.

4 

 Introduction

Indeed, there is a problem of differing levels of the readers, but the references provided below will cover necessary background in the English auxiliary system, including negation and inversion, and in the tense and aspect system. In my view, it would be pointless and hopelessly lengthy to go over in detail the basics of this much trodden ground. Less advanced readers looking for detailed overall presentation of verbal grammar, including the basic concepts and related terminology, need to become familiar with certain manuals that cover the topic of English verbs using various linguistic approaches.4 The authoritative traditional manuals, namely A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language (Quirk et al. 2004) and The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language (Huddleston and Pullum 2002), both exhaustively cover many aspects of English grammar. Both manuals discuss thoroughly the categories of finite verbs, including the details of their paradigms, and the semantics of verb phrases, auxiliaries and modals. The latter also details topics such as negation and infinitives and adopts a more formal approach. Despite the fact that some of their theoretical concepts may have been challenged by more recent studies, both books still provide an excellent source for any reader wanting to get initially acquainted with the core terminology related to the English verb. For a corpus-based approach, the Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English (Biber et al., 2006) is a good source. It deals systematically with verbal grammar in a wider sense, including valency patterns, and provides by far the most example sentences. Another useful reference is the Oxford Modern English Grammar (Aarts 2011), which gives a concise overview of the topics of tense, aspect and modality within a current formal framework, yet is understandable for readers without previous knowledge in the field. From the generative perspective, Haegeman and Guéron’s (1999) English Grammar reproduces widely accepted analyses of several topics, though many are re-analyzed in this volume (periphrastic tenses, affix movement, the structures of non-finite clauses). It is by far the most theoretical of these grammars. Yet, since it aims to be a textbook, it may appeal to readers wanting to learn basics of generative theory with English as a target language. For detailed and more specialized books on specific topics related to verbal categories, the reader might refer to the following canonical sources which cover some of the topics also discussed in this book, but are not necessarily focused exclusively on English verbs. Palmer’s Mood and Modality details modal semantics,

4 I thank D. Machová, who has herself extensively researched the history and present-day changes in English modals (Machová 2015; 2016) for drafting in these two paragraphs the summary of the traditional grammar presupposed in this work.

The emphasis on formalizing lexical entries 

 5

modal auxiliaries, and mood in English as well as in other languages. Leech’s Meaning and the English Verb deals with semantics of tense and aspect, as well as English modals and mood, and will serve as a very accessible source for any novice linguist. As for verbal categories that occur in English and recur in most other languages, the foundational works, although for the most part quite atheoretical, are Comrie’s two volumes Aspect and Tense. Because the book starts with a minimum of theoretical apparatus and tries to start from generalizations about observable patterns, it should be accessible not only to experienced linguists, who I hope are attracted by its theoretical innovations, but also to students and new researchers who are not overly attached to analyses frequently reproduced (but less frequently justified) in introductions to current syntax. Since the analyses here are cumulative and built one step at a time, and each theoretical claim is supported by evidence presented between these covers (rather than dependent on extensive previous reading), the logic of the arguments should be clear even when the conclusions might seem inconsistent with widespread presuppositions. This volume thus provides a relatively thorough introduction to the central part of English grammar, as well as to I hope a productive path to future advances.

The emphasis on formalizing lexical entries This volume repeatedly focuses on fully specifying formal lexical entries for closed class morphemes, both free and bound. Few other current works in syntax seem to pursue this aim. The motivation for this concern is the following. Since language-specific phrase structure rules and transformations were abandoned as unexplanatory in the late 1970s (Chomsky 1976; Stowell 1981), some other language-particular and item-particular formal device(s) must be found in order to construct predictive models of Universal Grammar. Otherwise, theoretical syntax cannot maintain its original claim to be a scientific model, one that specifies restrictive formal devices that describe complex observables, rather than speculates about general principles only loosely related to such devices. Paraphrasing proposals in Chomsky (1965), the main issue is, given (a), what is the answer to (b)? (a) Grammar of Li = UG (Universal Grammar) + Gi (= Particular Grammar of Li) (b) What exactly is the form of particular grammars Gi that supplement UG? A promising new start toward constructing particular grammars was Borer’s idea in Parametric Syntax (1984: 29) that precisely formulated lexical entries of grammatical morphemes, or “Grammatical Lexicons” (of closed class items), constitute

6 

 Introduction

the needed particular grammars Gi. Yet even though “Borer’s Conjecture” has been repeatedly espoused by several authors (Fukui and Speas 1986, Chomsky 1995, Boeckx 2006) and developed in considerable detail in, for example, Ouhalla (1991) and Emonds (2000), relatively few items in Grammatical Lexicons, from among the hundreds in each language, have even been formulated, much less theoretically situated in more complete descriptions.5 Very rarely have researchers concentrated on entries for particular morphemes, or tried to develop a uniform notation for them. Despite a lack of progress, the problem of answering (b) seems to remain meaningful and in no way ill-conceived or premature. In fact, it is more than meaningful. Given current general models of UG, the only way to fulfil Chomsky’s original fundamental aim of linguistic analysis is to produce formal Grammars of Li.6 Thus, very little research has actually focused on supporting or confirming Borer’s Conjecture, sometimes called “the Chomsky-Borer Conjecture” presumably indicating its wide acceptance in work developing Chomsky’s approach. Consider, for example, what research has uncovered for two languages highly scrutinized in generative studies, English and French. These are broadly speaking as syntactically close as one could expect for languages in different genealogical subfamilies. In terms widely used in syntactic literature, both have head-initial phrases, subject-verb agreement but relatively little other inflection, definite and indefinite articles, similar derivational morphology, clausal extraposition, overt WH-movement in both interrogative and relative clauses, analytic passives formed with past participles, inverted finite elements in questions, etc. Neither English nor French has case outside of pronouns, neither is pro-drop, neither has truly free word order, neither has three types of demonstratives, etc. We might thus expect that at least this pair of highly studied languages would be a fertile ground for testing Borer’s Conjecture, since, even if the Conjecture is

5 One could imagine that, with hundreds of generative researchers working on English in the 35 years subsequent to the Conjecture, an individual rate of producing one entry in 3 years would have led to thousands of proposals by now. Instead, even 100 formally explicit entries would be hard to find. An Index in Emonds (2000) contains about 50. 6 As the first paragraph in Chomsky’s (1957: ch. 2) Syntactic Structures states: The fundamental aim . . . is to separate the grammatical sequences which are the sentences of L from the ungrammatical sequences which are not sentences of L and to study the structure of the grammatical sequences. The grammar of L will thus be a device which generates all the grammatical sequences of L and none of the ungrammatical ones. Though Chomsky in the last two decades has called into question the centrality of this task, many researchers (see Newmeyer 1998: ch. 2), including myself, have always taken it as essential.

The emphasis on formalizing lexical entries 

 7

too strong for some pairs of distant languages, these two might well differ only in their Grammatical Lexicons. And indeed, despite their extensive similarities, their two Grammatical Lexicons seem to have no identical grammatical items in common. In my view, they share no preposition with the exact same grammar, nor any such complementizer, nor any verbal affix, nor negative word, nor degree word, nor quantifier, nor reflexive morpheme, nor grammatical verb, nor pronoun, nor prefix, nor article. So it seems like English and French might provide a very contentful and convincing confirmation of Borer’s Conjecture, but in the absence of formalized lexical entries in the two Grammatical Lexicons, such a claim still remains speculative.7 The path to answering the central question (b) is thus for research to now address it directly, rather than “abstracting away” from particular languages, as they have been for most of the generative period. This is why Emonds (2000) and this volume both focus on formally and completely specifying individual lexical entries. In general, I have no doubt that generative syntax could very soon answer the research question (b) in interesting and surprising ways, once analysts decide that the question is not a distraction from research conjectures bearing on UG, but rather the best stepping stone for turning them into truly testable hypotheses.

7 How large are the Grammatical Lexicons in question? The English and French Grammatical Lexicons Ge and Gf probably each contain some 400 items, including affixes and grammatical Ns, Vs, and As. So it seems that Borer’s Conjecture implies that researchers should eventually find some 800 formal grammatical statements that precisely and predictively specify the differences between the two languages. But recent generative authors in fact seem very little interested in pursuing this task.

1 English modals and be are not irregular verbs 1.1 English auxiliaries The apparent complexity of the English system of verbal auxiliaries is well known and has been analyzed in many works on grammar, both theoretical and practical. To illustrate the variety of auxiliaries, let’s examine an artificially constructed but still simple exchange among four friends of a couple who are applying for jobs. (1-1) a. Are John and Mary maybe getting hired now? b. John is already hired. Was Mary not being hired Monday? So they did get hired. c. That’s wrong; John and Mary have not yet been hired. d. But they will be hired soon, even if being hired does not seem easy and is not quick. With the same main verb hired, these sentences contain twelve different words that are called auxiliaries: are, getting, is, was, did, get, have, been, will, be, being, and does. And all except get/getting and be/being appear to be unrelated in form to each other.1 Traditional and structuralist treatments of the English verb go some way toward setting up an observationally adequate system, for example the “5 slot model” in (1-2) laid out in Quirk et al. (2004). (1-2) English predicates: (modal)-(perfect have)-(progressive be)-(passive be) – lexical verb Nonetheless, these treatments end up stating that an English lexical verb such as hired in the examples above can be preceded by a string of up to four auxiliary verbs in the same clause (should have been getting hired), and that these verbs, being subject to item-particular restrictions, are, well, just irregular. Thus, the available descriptions are simply lists of unpredictable irregularities of form

1 It is easy to appreciate that the various auxiliaries are practically unique in how they can be used, even though there are over 479 million (“12 factorial” = 12!) possible rearrangements of the twelve auxiliaries in (1-1). A formal grammatical description is required to at least implicitly account for why more than 99.9% of the possible combinations are ungrammatical. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110734379-002

1.2 Diagnostics for the category verb 

 9

and combination, and make no clear line between which verbs are “lexical” and which are “auxiliary”. The first decades of generative grammar saw significant progress in making formal sense of the English verb system. One important ingredient of this progress was the claim from the start (Chomsky 1957: ch. 7) that English auxiliaries and main verbs are not in the same syntactic category, even though some of the former may share some characteristic (later called a feature) of lexical verbs in some constructions. This proposal was hotly contested soon after it was made, even by Chomsky’s most intrepid followers (for example, Ross 1969), and most generative work on verbs in the last thirty years seems to increasingly reject, or at least ignore, Chomsky’s break with tradition. As a result, current generative syntax can easily give the impression that it is content to continue to refine well-established tenets of traditional and structuralist grammar – that English auxiliary verbs are first and foremost verbs, but have irregular lexical properties (item-particular and peripheral) that partly obscure their membership in the category V. The most intensely felt reaction to Chomsky’s original system and to subsequent proposals for maintaining and refining it seems to center on English modal auxiliaries, namely those which are invariant, whatever the grammatical number and person of a clausal subject. There is a clearly delineated class of modals that consists of the following: will, would, can, could, may, might, shall, should, must, ought, dare, need, and had better.2 This chapter explores the issue of whether modals are in the category V or not. A preponderance of authors in current linguistics, including generativists, assumes that they are. To answer this question, we first should have some contentful criteria as to what a verb is.

1.2 Diagnostics for the category verb 1.2.1 The place of verbs in clausal structure In line with traditional grammar going back to Aristotle, verbs are thought to be words that play a central role in the construction of “complete sentences” or (when there are no embedded sentences) “clauses”. In turn, a clause is then composed of: (i) a subject, a potentially complex Noun Phrase currently widely

2 This collocation occurs only where modals occur, in finite clauses. The present forms have/ has are never used in the collocation: You(’d) better stay home vs. *You’ve better stay home.

10 

 1 English modals and be are not irregular verbs

notated as DP (“Determiner Phrase”), and (ii) a predicate formed around a Verb Phrase, a unit whose “main word” is a verb.3 From this perspective, a typical clausal structure thus looks like this, with the agreeing main verbs underlined: (1-3) Subjects + Predicates [CLAUSE [DP [D some] [NP [N trails] into the forest] [VP really [V look] steep]] [CLAUSE [DP [D no] [NP [N trail] into the forest]] [VP really [V looks] steep]] [CLAUSE [DP [D those] [NP two [N guys] you chose]] [VP [V try] to drive well]] [CLAUSE [DP [D that] [NP one [N guy] you chose]] [VP [V tries] to drive well]] Thus one says that D is the head of DP, that N is the head of NP, and that V or VP is the head of the clause. Here are the coinciding defining properties of a head proposed in Harris (1957) and still current today: (1-4) Head Properties. A head of a phrase is a structurally obligatory position that selects other constituents in that phrase, and is selected by other heads outside that phrase. The fact that a head is structurally obligatory does not mean that its position is always spelled out by an overt morpheme. The obligatory Noun positions e in the bracketed subject phrases in (1-5a) are all phonetically silent, as are the “gapped” obligatory Verb positions in (1-5b): (1-5) a.

b.

[Those e through the forest] are the most beautiful. [Everybody else e in that neighborhood] seems to own a fur coat. [Three or more e of them] are usually dangerous. [e Who you marry] matters little to me. Has your sister got a car or [your brother e a bicycle]? John should clean the kitchen and [Mary e the bedrooms]. John is now a teacher and [Mary e a bus driver].

3 There is a misguided empiricist instinct that one can define in the data, prior to analysis, properties or categories that can serve as basic constructs such as “noun” or “verb”. In this view, statements like, “the noun is obligatory in a noun phrase” are considered valid only if they hold true in unanalyzed data, for example, data without empty categories. Following the hard sciences, generative linguistics has repeatedly shown the futility of the search for such data-based “operational tests”.

1.2 Diagnostics for the category verb 

 11

Although “head” is a central theoretical construct in syntax, there is no method of analyzing syntactic data based on a priori considerations such as (1-3) that can tell us which categories these heads belong to. Without further analysis involving co-occurrence, the frequently made claims expressed in (1-6) are false. (1-6) (i) A verb is required in a clause in order to express a complete thought. (ii) A verb is the item that, through its combinatorial properties, determines the structure of a proposition. Thus, the examples in (1-7a) lack a verb, but are complete and well-formed “thoughts”. Examples like (1-7b) force us to admit that the nouns walk, way, and argument, not the verbs, are the main determinants of how the propositions are structured. (1-7)

a.

Into the street with those barricades! Oh please, just a cup of coffee and two doughnuts! Why such a fuss over this election? What a stupid place for a vacation! b. John had a walk into the forest. It’s a long way from here to that planet with our current spaceships. They had arguments with each other over politics.

Rather than statements as in (1-6), the only way to define the categories needed for syntax is in terms of co-occurrence of these categories in local configurations with other categories. 1.2.2 The regularity of verbal inflections The centrality of inflection in syntax originates with the grammarians of the Roman Empire. Thrax, Varo and Priscian discovered that the best indicators of a word’s category – that is, the label that determines how it combines with other words – are the inflectional suffixes such as case and agreement that show up in various syntactic contexts. This discovery has enduring importance. Essentially all respected traditional grammars and handbooks consider regular productive inflections to be the surest indicator of a word’s grammatical category, the label that expresses how a word combines.4 4 There is no claim here that some given type of inflection, including any found in English, must occur in some other language(s). As this volume will show, individual inflections are due to lan-

12 

 1 English modals and be are not irregular verbs

Number agreement with subjects. A familiar example of inflection is the agreement with subject noun phrases expressed on verbs. If an English word is a verb stem, it can appear without change as the head of a VP in the present tense. However, if the subject is third person and singular, Standard English requires that a sibilant suffix –(ǝ)z, orthographically –(e)s, be added to the verb stem, as with the bold noun phrase subjects in (1-8).5 (1-8)

No other old trail into the forest really looks beautiful. That one person that you chose manages to drive well.

(1-9)

Agreeing verbal inflection. All and only English words using the suffix –(ǝ)z to show number agreement with third person singular subjects in the present tense are in the category Verb.

(1-10) Present participle and past tense inflections. In addition to subjectverb agreement, there are (only) two other independent verbal inflections in English.6 – First, every English verb accepts an agglutinative suffix (a suffix expressing a single feature) –ing, which forms an identical active participle and gerund form. This combination is always possible and never irregular. The range of constructions that use this form is the subject matter of chapters 4 and 5. – Second, outside a list of about 100 irregular stems (many of which are in the process of simplifying), every English verb has a single past tense form. The regular and productive form added to a verb is the suffix /(ǝ)d/, orthographically –ed. This form serves as both the finite past tense and the past/ passive participle. Past forms are the subject of chapter 2. These two inflections together unfailingly identify the category Verb in English.

guage-particular lexical entries. Thus, it may be that no language other than English shows overt verbal agreement only with unmarked person, number, and tense features. And as will be seen in ch. 4, the suffix –ing may also be unique in the world’s languages. 5 Three verb stems (say, do, have) out of thousands drop their final phonetic segment before this suffix. There are also nonstandard dialects which exhibit this –s suffix in certain contexts in other persons and in the plural. 6 As the next chapter will show, the established and generally unquestioned practice of considering the finite and non-finite allomorphs of the Past Tense as different “principal parts” of a verb is mistaken.

1.2 Diagnostics for the category verb 

 13

(1-11) Non-agreeing verbal inflections a. Participles/Gerunds. All English verb stems form a participle/gerund with the suffix –ing. b. The Past form. All English verbs have a past form whose regular productive suffix is –ed. Unlike the fully regular agreement and participial/gerund inflections, about 200 present-day English verb stems have phonetically irregular past forms, (for example, leave/left, sell/sold, buy/bought, hold/held, keep/kept), though none of them exhibit any syntactic irregularity. They have exactly the same syntax as do regular pasts such as loved, yelled, died, greeted, and loaded. Among the 200 verbs with irregular pasts, about half in Standard English (for example, eat, fly, run, sing, write) still have two distinct allophonic variants, one that appears in finite contexts (ate, flew, ran, sang, wrote) and one in participial position (eaten, flown, run, sung, written).7 However, nonstandard dialects are inexorably leveling the differences between these two forms, suggesting strongly that current English grammar is basically designed around a single past form. This issue of two past forms (a verb’s second and third “principal parts”) is treated in detail in Emonds (2012d) and in the next chapter, but this issue does not affect the analysis or claims about the English verbal system made in this current chapter.

1.2.3 The interpretive core of the category verb We now have two coinciding formal Inflectional Criteria (1-9) and (1-10) for when an English word is a verb. In these terms, the modals in section 1.1 are not verbs. They clearly don’t take inflections (*musts,*musted, *musting). Given this robust contrast and unambiguous conclusion, why then do a majority of analysts, including generativist proponents of formal grammar, think modals are verbs? In my view, this results from the widespread belief that modals express “verbal meanings”. So to evaluate this belief, we need to address a general question, what does a verb mean? The vast majority of verbs in any language, including thousands of them in English, refer to “Activities/ Actions” or “Events,” but since not all verbs do, semantic-based analyses often propose that verbs can, but do not always, have a

7 For a given open class verb, the two contextual allophones always have the same initial consonant cluster, with a single exception went/ gone. Except for different context features, both allophones are represented as [V, PAST].

14 

 1 English modals and be are not irregular verbs

feature such as +Activity or +Event. Nonetheless, given the “Activities” in (1-12), it’s hard to see what semantic concept this extra nomenclature refers to other than “is used like a typical V”: (1-12) a. Mary has been sleeping for hours. She’s doing nothing today. b. Do nothing till you hear from me. Keep a low profile, and stay in the same place. c. A quiet room can do a lot to calm a person. Lack of activity will refresh your soul. Consequently, Emonds (2000: ch. 7) proposes that “+Activity” is simply the standard LF (“Logical Form”) interpretation of V in its basic position as the head of VP. Hence linguistic analysis needs no label +Activity in addition to the category V itself. Grammatical properties that have been associated with this feature, such as being compatible with progressive aspect and imperatives, as in (1-12a-c), are nothing more than regular properties of the syntactic category Verb. Nonetheless, it is well known that a relatively small class of non-activity or “Stative” verbs are generally excluded from progressive aspect and/or imperative mood.8 (1-13) Some Stative verbs. have, own, seem, need, want, owe, know, like, prefer, hate, love, fear (1-14) *Own two houses soon. *Don’t need very much attention. *Know the news about the fire. *Hate criminals that exploit children. *Don’t fear a new storm.

*She is owning a new house. *That city was needing a new mayor. *Mary might be knowing her neighbors. *Barbara was hating your comment. *He’s fearing that he’ll be late.

Stative verbs mostly express some kind of possession or lack of it, or the basic affect of an Experiencer NP toward a Theme NP: MaryEXPERIENCER hates her jobTHEME. In section 4 of this chapter and then again in chapter 3, the syntax of Stative verbs will play a role in argumentation. My use of them here is limited to introducing a simple lexical formalism that can characterize how they differ from Activity verbs. This device will be more widely justified and utilized as we proceed.

8 In some contexts, various Stative verbs are marginally acceptable. See the examples in (1-15). Moreover, in certain dialects such as Irish English, the progressive forms seem to appear freely with Stative verbs. See Henry (1995).

1.2 Diagnostics for the category verb 

 15

For now, the question is, how does the mental lexicon differentiate Stative verbs from unmarked Activity verbs so that both classes are correctly interpreted? Their common grammatical category must be V, given the Inflectional Criteria (1-9) and (1-10). Moreover, Stative verbs can sometimes exhibit full verbal syntax under appropriate semantic and/or pragmatic conditions, as do those underlined in (1-15). (1-15) Don’t own more houses than you can keep up. I’m fearing the worst. Know thyself. They are needing more care than expected. I beg you, don’t hate me. Johnnie is hating summer camp. Please your parents if you can. This concert seems to be pleasing her parents. Given such facts, the standard restrictions on using Stative verbs seen in (1-14) must be due to interpretation rather than being purely syntactic. That is, the restrictions are part of the often termed “conceptual-intentional interface”, also known as LF = Logical Form (Chomsky 1976). Stative verbs should therefore have some marked feature in LF to indicate that, unlike unmarked V, they usually do not refer to Activity/ Event; such reference is generally “canceled,” except in special uses like (1-15). For purposes of syntax, Stative verbs retain the full potential of the category V. For this aspect of meaning, I suggest: (1-16) LF Cancellation Feature. Every syntactic head category, such as V, has a characteristic LF interpretation in its base position. However, for a subset of that category with a marked feature +Ø, this interpretation can be absent. The unmarked members of the huge class of Activity verbs are simply categorized as V, while the subset of Stative verbs are additionally specified as VØ. There is no need in linguistic theory for any separate “semantic features” such as Activity or Stative; these are just convenient and suggestive labels for V and VØ respectively.9 9 More generally, this “cancellation feature” Ø can combine with the defining interpretation of other head categories: a determiner D with no reference, such as an “expletive” pronoun, is notated DØ, and prepositions (of, with, without, etc) that do not refer to a Space/Time location are lexically listed as PØ.

16 

 1 English modals and be are not irregular verbs

This section has now collected a number of general properties that always hold of English verbs, which drastically minimizes traditional grammar’s tolerance, often almost celebration, of exceptions to rules, fuzzy categories, and irregularity. (1-17) Regular and predictive properties of English Verbs a. The unmarked meaning of all verbs is Activity/ Event, and even Stative verbs have this interpretation in certain contexts. Progressive aspect is a manifestation of the Activity interpretation. b. English verbs all take the regular participial/gerund suffix –ing. c. No English verbs exhibit number agreement in a marked person or tense. d. Most English V have a unique past form, except for about 100 with distinct finite and participial past allomorphs. Even then, these two allomorphs always have the same initial consonants.10 e. All (and only) English V stems serve as syntactically well-formed imperatives. I have not yet treated subject-verb agreement (1-9) formally, but section 1.4 will show that this property of English verbs is also exceptionless.

1.3 The nineteen non-verbal auxiliaries of English Among the so-called English auxiliaries, this section will analyze the thirteen modals listed at the end of section 1.1, and show that a similar analysis is valid for the six “finite forms of the verb be” (more neutrally termed the finite copulas) am, are, is, ain’t, was and were. As a reader can verify, these nineteen auxiliary forms completely fail all five diagnostics in (1-17a-e) for being in the category Verb. (1-18) (i)

Neither modals nor finite copulas ever express by themselves an activity (1-17a). (ii) Both groups are incompatible with the regular inflectional suffixes -ing, -(e)s and -(e)d, that is, separate participial, agreement, and past forms (1-17b-d). (iii) None of either group can ever be imperatives (1-17e).

10 That is, the two past allophones always alliterate: blew/ blown; rang /rung; saw/ seen; wrote/ written. As in Old English poetry, any initial vowels alliterate, so that eat/ ate with initial null consonants, is no exception to (1-17d). The single true exception is among the closed class of grammatical verbs, namely went/ gone. It also follows (1-17c-d) that the agreeing forms is, am, are, was, and were are not Verbs. The next section gives ample corroborative evidence.

1.3 The nineteen non-verbal auxiliaries of English 

 17

Unlike Stative verbs in (1-15), these exclusions are not “weakened” in certain contexts; they are absolute. (1-19)

*Are helping yourselves to the cake, please. *Need not more money than you can earn. *I beg you, don’t will be thoughtless. *Johnnie is canning speak German. *Should help your parents if you can.

Perhaps the only needed qualification for the statement (1-18ii) concerns the two modals could and would, which are sometimes past forms of can and will: Harry could/ would swim a mile last year. However, these are not pure past tense forms, as can be seen by comparing them with normal Verbs: (1-20) Harry could/ would normally swim a mile tomorrow. *Harry normally swam a mile tomorrow. Could/ Would she sing for them an hour from now? *Did she sing for them an hour from now? These two forms would and could thus require special analysis; calling them irregular verbs (or irregular modals) doesn’t in itself answer any questions about their unique distributional freedom. The criteria in (1-17) conclusively demonstrate that these nineteen English auxiliary forms are completely unlike verbs.

1.3.1 Structural position of the category I We can observe that the thirteen modals and six finite copulas are always pre-verbal and in strict complementary distribution.11 This clearly indicates that there is a single syntactic slot for these nineteen items, which furthermore precedes the V in clause structure. This slot calls for a consistent categorial label. One symbol that has been frequently used for this purpose, introduced in Chomsky (1986), is 11 “Preverbal” here refers to the presence of the first structural V after I. These V are sometimes covert, licensed by movement, ellipsis, or alternative realization, like the covert e in the following: . . .and sleeping he is e; Standing outside was e Jim; Ann is jogging, and so is John e; Susan isn’t yet e ill. In some nonstandard speech, might can sometimes precede other modals, for example, might could, might should.

18 

 1 English modals and be are not irregular verbs

the symbol I. We can also motivate a phrasal category VP that does not include I, though what has been said up to now does not require such a phrase. That is, a standard clause has the form DP – I – VP. What is most important here is the sequential separateness of I and V. Since this chapter’s aim is to demonstrate that I and V are entirely separate word categories, it is not essential to this logic to show that the sister of I is a phrasal VP or that I heads its own phrase IP. Nonetheless, there is good evidence for both these proposals.

1.3.2 The large membership and types of features of V This volume is built around a central distinction among all grammatical categories between open and closed classes of lexical items, often alternatively termed lexical (open class) categories and functional (closed class) categories. The two categories V and I are archetypical examples, V being an open class lexical category and I being a closed class functional category. 1.3.2.1 VP is a sister to I Three English constructions confirm the idea that a single phrasal constituent VP, underlined in the examples in (1-21), follows I (bold in these examples): – English has at least one construction where these VP move and I is stranded (1-21a); – these VP can be ellipted (zero under identity with an overt counterpart), suggesting they are single constituents (1-21b); – these VP can serve as single phrases that are focus constituents in pseudoclefts (1-21c). (1-21) a. The neighbor proposed we might sell our car soon, and sell it soon we will. They think she is getting cheated by the landlord, and getting cheated she is. b. They might buy a house before we can (buy a house). Though we aren’t buying a house now, they are (buying a house now). c. What we should do is buy a house soon. What they will now do is get vaccinated without delay. The basic English clausal pattern in declaratives thus seems to be the sequence DP–I–VP.

1.3 The nineteen non-verbal auxiliaries of English 

 19

A question that this volume does not definitively answer is whether I + VP forms an “intermediate I” projection that contains them and is itself a sister to the preceding DP. In this regard, is there some general restriction that all trees be binary branching (Kayne 1994), which requires some kind of phrasal I′, or can the sequences DP–I–VP be “flat”? Since 2000, hardly any syntactic literature claims that ternary branching trees, i.e. flat structures in this case, must in some cases arise. An exception is Emonds (2000: ch. 8), which argues in detail that at least eight well-attested double complement frames in English (promise DP to VP, strike DP as AP, seem to DP that IP, rob DP of DP, etc.) unambiguously justify flat structures. Consequently, while binary branching is undoubtedly a default procedure for generating trees, it can be overruled at least by lexical selection of multiple complements. Since the arguments that I can construct for both flat and binary branching IP structures seem inconclusive at this point, I leave this question open. 1.3.2.2 I is a head above VP There is a lot of cross-linguistic evidence that head categories can move only to the next highest head positions in trees (Baker 1988). For example, we know (i) that Vs in French (and perhaps many languages) move to a position between subject phrases and clausal negation (Emonds 1978), and (ii) that English modals and finite copulas move to an introductory C position to the left of subjects in direct questions. Then, given that the landing site for V movement in French is I, this I is plausibly a head, and the fact that the English I moves to C suggests the latter is also a head. Both these movements are then cases of head to head movement, which implies that I must be a head, exactly as in Baker’s framework.

1.3.3 Meaning of the category I We will now see that the choice of the symbol I can be grounded in something other than shorthand for “Inflection”. Based in part on cross-linguistic motivations in Palmer (2001), Veselovská and Emonds (2015) argue that a fundamental division between types of clauses should be based on a dichotomy of grammatical “mood”, contrasting Realis (roughly indicative) clauses and Irrealis (roughly subjunctive) clauses. Realis clauses are those whose literal meanings commit the speaker to their holding in the real world; for example, the sentences in (1-3) are Realis. Irrealis clauses are those where the speaker is not claiming that a predicate phrase, such as those bracketed in (1-22), holds of its subject in the real world, present or past. In English, the principal indicators of Irrealis I are the modals:

20 

 1 English modals and be are not irregular verbs

(1-22)

John [I should] [VP have a walk into the forest]. (does not imply John has ever been in the forest) They [I might] [VP have arguments with each other over politics]. (does not imply that they argue) Those people that you chose [I ought] to [VP know how to drive]. (whether they do isn’t known)

In these terms, the modals, whose Logical Form interpretation is Irrealis, are labeled I.12 The lexical entries for the modals are thus simple: (1-23)

Lexical entries for Modals will, I, FUTURE can, I, POTENTIAL could, I, POTENTIAL, PAST

Here we find a second use of the Cancellation Feature Ø introduced in (1-16). As with Vs, the Cancellation Feature can succinctly represent those I which are not Irrealis. The symbol IØ in a simple declarative clause signals that a speaker is reporting a present or past truth. Traditional grammar often labels this use of Realis (IØ) as “finite indicative mood.” (1-24) John usually IØ [VP walked into the forest]. (implies it often really happened) They IØ [VP have arguments with each other over politics]. (implies they argue) Those three you chose IØ [VP know how to drive well]. (implies they drive well) There are three frequent means in English for overtly realizing IØ (Realis). A clause is Realis if: – its first verb is either in the past tense or agrees with the subject in the present tense (section 1.3.3), – it contains a finite copula (section 1.3.4), or – its first verb is preceded by the auxiliary verb do (section 1.4.1). We will see that in each case, the I in the clause has the feature Ø, which expresses Realis. A reviewer expresses some surprise that the unmarked value or interpretation of I is Irrealis, rather than the reverse. Nonetheless, unmarked forms tend to have more lexical members and grammatical subclasses (compare Count to Mass 12 Because the grammatical features of modals are interpreted, they are not inserted in PF (“after Spell Out”). My use of the term “late insertion” is thus not as inclusive as in analyses where all grammatical morphemes are inserted after a syntactic derivation is completed, for example, as in Newson (2012), where Modals are subject to Late Insertion.

1.3 The nineteen non-verbal auxiliaries of English 

 21

nouns), and in English, the language under scrutiny, Modals are indeed more numerous and grammatically differentiated than Tense forms.

1.3.4 The syntactic “NICE properties” of I Even the most traditionally oriented grammarians have noted that the auxiliaries that are placed here in the I position, the modals and finite copulas, have in common robust and well-defined syntactic behavior that sets them apart from verbs. These well known paradigms are now widely referred to as the NICE properties of I (Denison 1993), and according to (1-17a-e) they are not shared by any item that can be motivated as being in a tree’s V position. These properties are listed below in (1-25)-(1-31). Unfortunately, specialists of English grammar rarely represent the NICE properties in terms of the probably universal hierarchical structure seen in (1-22), according to which the sister constituents I and VP, taken together, express semantically the predicates of clauses. The first two NICE properties concern the position of clausal negation and of inversion in polar (yes-no) questions. (1-25) Negation. The canonical position of clausal negation is the edge of VP immediately following I.13 (1-26) Inversion. The category I can invert to the left of subject DPs in several languages, including in English direct questions. An English V in a VP never inverts in questions.14 In English, clausal negation is spelled out as not/n’t. Since this is the only place where n’t appears, this suffix n’t is a sure sign that its hosts (modals and finite copulas) are under I and not in the position of V.15 13 This holds in a head-initial language. For head-final languages, “following” should be replaced by “preceding” The negation involved here is sentence negation. This contrasts with non-canonical instances of “constituent negation”, which can never be contracted. These are briefly discussed in section 4.2.2. 14 It might be that in languages such as French and Spanish, it is V rather than I which inverts. But at least in French, this apparent movement of V is due to the fact that finite French (but not English) verbs always move to I first (Emonds 1978), so that what inverts with a subject in French is V in the I position. 15 The affixal or free morpheme status of clausal negation varies across languages. French clausal negation pas ‘not’ also occurs between I and VP, but always as a free morpheme. Czech ne- is

22 

 1 English modals and be are not irregular verbs

(1-27) The boys mustn’t do annoying things. They needn’t go to bed early. They aren’t to be found anywhere. We won’t have to do that.

* The boys must don’t annoying things. *They need go not to bed early. *They are to be not found anywhere. *We will haven’t to do that.

Similarly for inversion: only items in I and never those in V invert in polar questions.16 (1-28)

Must the boys do annoying things? Need they go to bed early? Are they to be found anywhere? Will we have to do that?

*Do the boys (must) annoying things? *Go they (need) to bed early? *Be they (are) to found anywhere? *Have we (will) to do that?

(1-29) Codas/ Tags. English tag questions contain a pronominal copy of the subject and a copy of the main clause I, never of a V. (1-30)

Sam wasn’t late, was he? This might easily break, mightn’t it? *Mary may have to see a doctor, hasn’t she? *Your son can always do that work, doesn’t he?

(1-31) Ellipsis of VP. Null VPs are well-formed in English if (i) they have a linguistic antecedent VP, and (ii) an overt item in I, underlined in (1-32), which immediately precedes the null VP (Sag 1976). (1-32) Although the boys were acting polite at the party, the girls were not [VP Ø]. Some applicants don’t know how to drive manual shifts, but they should [VP Ø]. In contrast, items in the V position never suffice to license anaphoric null VPs in English.17

always prefixed to the following V, but never to a (possibly homonymous) inflected I (Veselovska 2004). 16 For the English auxiliary do, which is located in I and also has the NICE properties, see section 1.4.4. There are also some English declarative patterns where Vs invert with subjects, but these are not of concern here: Into the pond rolled a wagon; she would be back late, said Susan. 17 There are languages (Czech, Japanese, Spanish) where it appears that an overt V standing alone suffices to license the rest of the VP as null, but one might hypothesize that in these languages, the main verb is raised to I, so that structurally their VP ellipsis is like English. At this

1.4 Interactions between I and V 

 23

Another point about null VPs is central to understanding distributions of empty categories such as null V and null I. Real world (aka “conceptual”) understanding of subjects and predicates – that is, pragmatic well-formedness – requires that head Vs and head Ns actuallyhave reference to overtly realized Noun subjects and Verb predicates. So head Vs can be empty, as in some examples in (1-5) and (1-32), only if they are licensed by some overt linguistic antecedent in a canonical V position as a head of a VP, for example, acting and drive in (1-32).18 (1-33) Pragmatic Completeness. Head Vs can be interpreted only if they are (co)-referential with overt lexical items. Thus, isolated statements with no linguistic context such as we can, John doesn’t ever, everybody does it, go for it, some do and some don’t are ill-formed, unless they have special idiomatic status as slogans or fixed phrases. Summarizing, (1-17a-e), (1-25), (1-26), (1-29) and (1-31) assemble nine clear categorial diagnostics which sharply distinguish the categories V and I. In the data for these contrasts, I have contrasted exemplars of closed class English I with the open class of English V, finding no overlap of properties or syntactic behavior that might suggest some kind of “graded” or “scalar” relation of irregularity between them. In particular, the modal auxiliaries have no syntax at all in common with verbs, and so in no way are a “special irregular subclass” of English verbs. The same goes for the finite copulas; it is irrational to continue to call them irregular verbs.

1.4 Interactions between I and V There are nonetheless significant syntactic interactions between the distinct categories I and V, which is natural enough since they are adjacent head categories in trees, and many adjacent heads across languages have effects on each other’s morphology and syntax; Baker (1988) is a compendium of such constructions. It’s no surprise then that English I and V frequently interact. But “frequently interact” doesn’t mean “are versions of the same thing”.19

point, I do not know whether this hypothesis is viable, or whether languages can simply have different means of licensing VP ellipsis. 18 Some languages have null lexical items for a grammatical V of motion with pragmatic reference but no linguistic antecedent. Thus Middle English, Shakespeare and most Modern West Germanic languages, when a modal is present, allow counterparts to examples such as we must soon to the church. (van Riemsdijk, 2002). Modern English lacks such a null head V of motion. 19 Compare for example people and dogs.

24 

 1 English modals and be are not irregular verbs

1.4.1 Affix Movement: The effects of Realis (IØ) on V English and probably all languages allow various syntactic positions to be silent (sometimes called “covert”, “empty”, or “phonologically null”) provided the features of these positions are realized by overt morphemes spelled out in adjacent syntactic positions; some examples of the empty categories N, D, V and I have been indicated with the symbol e in (1-5).20 What was known as “Affix Movement” in the framework of Chomsky (1957) expresses a condition of this sort: the base or canonical position of his obligatory Tense category (the forerunner of what is here called I) can be empty if it is spelled out as an affix on the following (lower) V. Formally, every syntactic category and feature has at least one basic structural position where it is interpreted in Logical Form. This is its canonical position. But sometimes a category or feature is spelled out in a different though nearby position. This possibility is what Emonds (1994; 2000) calls “Alternative Realization” (AR), while Embick and Noyer (2001) call it “Dissociation”.21 In terms of the exposition here: (1-34) Alternative Realization/ Dissociation (AR). A syntactic feature of a category can be spelled out outside its canonical position by a closed class item under another category, provided some projections of the two categories are adjacent sisters. We can define categories in a tree as adjacent if the strings of morphemes they dominate are not separated by some additional morpheme. Thus, in students from Boston often travel to Europe, if from Boston is in the DP subject and often is in the VP, and additionally the I between them dominates no overt morpheme, we say that the subject DP and the predicate VP are adjacent. In English Person and Number Agreement on verbs, ±PLURAL and 3rd PERSON, reflect canonical features on a D head that projects to a subject DP ([this student of music] often sings versus [these students of music] often sing). These features can then also be spelled out on the head of an adjacent VP, if the clause is Realis (a projection of a null IØ). These D features and [IØ, -PAST] are realized as a bound

20 Other instances of AR are French empty Ps which result from realizing the P feature ±GOAL in the adjacent D position (the French articles des ‘of the’, aux ‘to the’, etc.), and the empty German Ds which result from Case features on definite articles realized on P (aufs ‘on the’, im ‘in the’). 21 Alternative Realization/ Dissociation also subsumes what Halle and Marantz (1993) call Merger and much of of what Baker (1988) calls Head Movement and/or Incorporation.

1.4 Interactions between I and V 

 25

morpheme –s under a different nearby category V.22 This satisfies the proviso in AR (1-34) of adjacent phrasal projections of the canonical D features and their “nearby” realizations on V. This type of dissociation, known as “Subject-Verb Agreement”, is valid for all English Verbs that are Realis. A little reflection shows that all the modals in I are Irrealis and show no agreement. A clause with a modal does not commit the speaker to the truth (reality) of the subject – predicate combination. The members of I that do imply the truth of the combination are precisely those realized by the two finite tenses: Present and Past (–s and –ed), and so the symbol that cancels the Irrealis interpretation, namely IØ, covers exactly these two affixes. The morphemes under V that spell out IØ are these regular inflections plus a closed class of around 200 irregular past forms. English I – V structures thus realize these Tense features as Realis I under V in two ways: (1-35) Alternative Realization of Realis (IØ) (i) DP

(ii)

IP IØ

[ VP …V…]

Ø

V

IØ = -s, -Ø, -ed

DP

IP IØ Ø

VP V, I Ø = ate, broke, chose,...

The irregular finite Past forms of verbs as in (ii) will be more fully analyzed in chapter 2. In these instances of English present and past Realis tenses, there is always a null I position. That is, dissociation of IØ in these cases leads to an empty category in the canonical position of I, as seen in (1-35). Part of an eventual universal theory of Economy of Representation (Chomsky 1991) thus seems to include the following:

22 Inflections are always closed rather than open classes; in many cases their role seems to be to allow features to be spelled out in non-canonical positions. In theoretical terms, these bound morphemes thus seem to contribute to more structurally economical representations.

26 

 1 English modals and be are not irregular verbs

(1-36) Invisible Category Principle. If all the grammatical features of an interpretable grammatical category are alternatively realized, then the category’s canonical position has to be null.23 Since a lexical entry can contain alternatively realized as well as canonical features, we need a principle that states where in a tree an entry is supposed to be located. (1-37) Structural locations for lexical insertion. An inherent (non-conextual) syntactic feature in initial position in a lexical entry indicates that an allomorph is in a canonical position in a tree. With the convention (1-37), we can write a lexical entry for the two productive English finite (= Realis) inflections. The entry (1-38) contains the word-internal context feature , and since a position under V is not a canonical position for either IØ or the Person and Number features, their presence in (1-38) must indicate alternatively realized features. The agreement features, third person and singular (–PL), are thus dissociated features, in this case from the subject DP sister of V or VP. The Past suffix must be adjacent to an immediately preceding Realis I, a point to be discussed in detail in chapter 2.  PAST, -ed  (1-38) Lexical entry for finite Tense suffixes. IØ___, ,   3rd, -PL, -s   Ø

     

This lexical entry, expressing AR, which subsumes the Merger of Halle and Marantz (1993), dispenses with the need for the problematic early transformational lowering rule known as Affix Movement. It fully expresses the finite allophones that result from such a rule.24 Since this entry is far from trivial, we pause to become acquainted with the types of symbols it contains. The first feature indicates, with word-internal subcategorization brackets (Lieber 1980), that precisely one of the three lines

23 A Stative Verb VØ, whether of open or closed class, is interpretable as a head expressing a relation among phrasal arguments, although the relation expressed is then not an Activity or Event. However, as we will see in section 1.5.3, empty Vs that don’t satisfy Pragmatic Completeness (1-33), such as certain instances of the Verb do, are not interpretable and hence cannot be replaced by empty categories. 24 They are not fully dissociated because their canonical positions in D are pronounced.

1.4 Interactions between I and V 

 27

enclosed in the disjunctive brace notation {. . .} of Chomsky and Halle (1968) must be suffixed to any V which follows an adjacent Realis I, that is, an I that is not a Modal. The syntactic and morphophonological content of each suffix has a separate line within the braces. The non-Past and non-Plural, non-third-person suffixes have no morphophonological content (Ø). The V host of the suffixes can be in any V position immediately following I, either the head of VP or a V realized inside a higher I or C. This paragraph thus covers all the symbols in (1-38). Turning now to the syntax of the I position, a long-standing puzzle concerns how to express the incompatibility of clausal negation or inverted subjects with English tense suffixes on lexical Vs: (1-39)

The janitor completely fixes/ fixed those problems. *The janitor not completely fixes / fixed those problems. *Fixes /*Fixed the janitor those problems completely? The janitor does/ did not completely fix those problems.

We will see several instances in this study where alternative and canonical realizations of a feature are not linearly adjacent, but do involve adjacent heads. In fact, the intervening adverbs in (1-39) permit agreement with V, despite a lack of linear adjacency. So what is necessary in (1-38) is that the canonical position of IØ must be linearly adjacent to a projection of its alternative realization: namely the VPs over V in (1-35i-ii). The adverbs ending in –ly and other adverbs that don’t interfere with the adjacency of IØ and V are thus inside VP, while not and inverted subjects are outside it. The adjacency under discussion seems to arise between two syntactic features in a single lexical entry, in particular between the higher one and the smallest maximal projection over the lower one, as in “affix movement” between an “adjacent” I and V.25 (1-40) Stipulated Adjacency. In an entry for an item α, a feature F stipulated as a higher context (+F___) must be adjacent to the smallest XP containing α.

25 At least two such cases seem to arise in French. Following note 20, in one construction the two heads are P and the D head of its object DP: AR replaces de – le ‘from the’ with Ø – du. But tout/ tous ‘all’ can intervene, arguably being adjoined outside DP; this intervening element blocks AR: French has de tout le groupe’ of all the group’ and not *tout du groupe. Similarly, French preverbal clitics replace direct object pronouns according to AR: voit – eux ‘see them’ becomes les + voit. But if que ‘only’ intervenes, it is again arguably outside the object DP, and blocks AR: French has ne voit qu’eux ‘see only them’ but not *ne les voit que.

28 

 1 English modals and be are not irregular verbs

Thus, the lexical entry (1-38) can realize the English Tense suffixes under a V only if the projected VP is right-adjacent to IØ; this adjacency thus accounts for the restrictions on affix movement brought out in Chomsky (1957).

1.4.2 The finite copula Any phrase headed by a verb in English can follow any modal (subject possibly to pragmatic restrictions), where modals are canonically spelled out under the category I. We have also seen in (1-24) that all these same VPs, when the main verb is a past or (agreeing) present tense, can appear with an empty I, since the Tense endings inside VP alternatively realize the feature IØ on the adjacent head V. The study of the NICE properties of I (section 1.3.4), moreover, has revealed that the six so-called irregular forms of be (are, is, am, was, were, ain’t) are not verbs, but syntactic forms of Realis I, their particularity being that they replace the present and past tenses of be that should be expected in Realis clauses. These six forms are traditionally called the “finite forms of be” because, rather than the forms on the left in (1-41) that we would expect if be were like all other verbs, we instead encounter the patterns on the right. (1-41) Expected if Realis be were like other Verbs: Actually occurring replacement: *He [I Ø] [VP [VØ,IØ bes] sad]. → He [I is] [VP [VØ,IØ Ø] sad]. Cf. He [I Ø] [VP [VØ,IØ appears] sad]. *They [I Ø] [VP [VØ,IØ be] sad]. → They [I,PL, VØ are] [VP [VØ,IØ Ø] sad]. Cf. They [I Ø] [VP [VØ,IØ seem] sad]. *She [I Ø] [VP [VØ,IØ, PST beed] sad]. → She [I, PAST, VØ was] [VP [VØ,IØ Ø] sad]. Cf. She [I Ø] [VP [VØ,IØ appeared] sad]. For an accurate analysis, we should first have a lexical entry for be. This verb is not an Activity verb; it’s the least marked (least contentful) Stative verb (Ross 1969). Besides its category VØ it has no other content features. That is, it has only the Cancellation Feature, which makes it a Stative rather than Activity Verb: (1-42) Lexical entry for the English copula. be, V, Ø, +____XP26

26 The copula must have some phrasal complement XP, but there does not seem to be a restriction on its categorial type.

1.4 Interactions between I and V 

 29

Therefore, the English verb be is not so much “irregular” as it is “defective”. That is, its expected finite forms (1-41) with the feature IØ (alternatively realizing Realis, or “finiteness”) fail to surface. Instead, the Stative feature VØ and the Person and Number features are all alternatively realized in the position I ( the initial feature in this entry). (1-43) Standard English finite copulas: I Ø, VØ, { { -PL, was } / were }, PAST   { 1st, am } / {3rd, is }, -PL / are     

It is hard to imagine how representations of these forms might be simpler; any analysis must stipulate that were is PAST, that was is not plural, that am is first person, and so on.27 The traditionally named “finite forms of the verb be” do in this way “substitute” for be, but it should be understood that they are actually not forms of be or of any verb. Morphologically they are in I, or in other words, they are Realis auxiliaries. The complementary distribution of be and the finite copulas may give the impression that be moves and changes form, but the finite copulas are distinct from the verb be. For example their first person and past forms agree in number with the subject DP, which English verbs never do, whether they are moved or not. The empty categories in the positions (1-41) where one might expect finite forms of be need not be stipulated in the entry for the copula (1-42), however. The twin devices of Alternative Realization (1-34) and the Invisible Category Principle (1-36) entail empty copulas [VØ, IØ Ø] automatically. For example, we want to know why these empty copulas are obligatory rather than optional. Alongside The deer is/ are tired, why do we not also have the option *The deer do/ does be tired? In a construction where finiteness is not available, for example in imperative constructions, apparently derived from structures with deleted deep modals (can/ will), the combination do + be is in fact allowed: Do(n’t) be generous, (will you). Thus, it seems that the combination do + be is excluded when only single words such as is, was, were, etc. are available. A generalization of this determines which surface realization of an underlying structure is to be preferred. The needed princip!e is (1-44): (1-44) Syntactic Economy of Representation (partial). A given XP in LF should be realized with as few free morphemes (words) as possible.

27 For an analysis of the negative form ain’t in the category I, see Parrott (2016), based on Nevins and Parrott (2010).

30 

 1 English modals and be are not irregular verbs

Correctly, principle (1-44) has no impact on derivations which optionally reduce the number of pronounced already inserted words (derivations reducing unstressed pronoun words to simple clitics, want to to wanna, or not to n‘t, or contractions of elements in I (will → ’ll). For in each such derivation, the same number of free morphemes is inserted before a subsequent process reduces the number of words. On the other hand, (1-44) does favor whatever portmanteau words a lexicon may contain over multi-word alternatives. Thus, French au ‘to the’ is required instead of á le, and [1 is] + [v Ø] is preferred to [1 do] + [v be]. Only when the former is not available, as in imperatives, may the latter surface. Even so, this still leaves open the question of how and where the finite copulas themselves (is, am, etc.) enter the IØ position in trees. Ever since the mid-1970s, the predominant view among formal syntacticians has been that, when the highest underlying verb in a VP sister to I is be, it “raises” to I and then rather oddly, splits into several agreeing finite copulas, so that these latter, despite their completely different forms, are all at bottom suppletive verbal forms. As just exemplified in (1-41), the deep position of be is obligatorily empty whenever its VP projection is a sister to a Realis IØ. Under the be-raising analysis, this empty surface V in the VP is a trace left by be moving to I. The next section 1.4.3 evaluates the fifty-year history of this “be-raising” as a core aspect of the generative description of English, and in so doing provides arguments for rejecting it. If this revised view is correct, this history is then actually a digression from a better analysis, according to which the finite copulas are inserted under I directly from the lexicon and are the cause rather than the result of an empty copula inside VP. In particular, section 1.4.4 will argue that English finite copulas are not raised verbs, but rather instances of Alternative Realization, where the canonical category VØ must be empty. The AR of VØ can occur on the sister of the VP projection, and this sister, as argued earlier, is I. That is, the Realis I sister of an otherwise contentless head of a Stative VP must alternatively realize the latter’s feature VØ, exactly as represented in the right column of (1-41).28

1.4.3 The pros of English be-raising The entire tradition of Western grammar, going back as I understand it to Dionysius Thrax of first-century Alexandria through Priscian of sixth-century Constan-

28 Some readers may wish to skip the next section on generative history, and go directly to the analysis of section 1.4.4.

1.4 Interactions between I and V 

 31

tinople, is built around inflection, especially the inflections in grammatical agreement. The central notion of “Verb” is based on which word in a clause agrees in Person and Number with the subject. When in the Modern Era such agreement is curtailed or suppressed, grammarians often argue that, since other properties of Verbs remain unchanged (e.g. patterns of argument selection, basic word order, modification by Tense and Aspect markers), the loss of inflection does not entail any change of category. In Chomsky’s early analyses of the English verb (1957, 1965), focusing as they did on specifying rules for well-formed sequences, the modern loss of agreement on Middle English modals plausibly implied that they were no longer Verbs. Ross (1969), however, argued that modern modal auxiliaries remained sufficiently “verb-like” to warrant labeling them Verbs; he pointed out that other auxiliaries, namely have and be, unlike modals, do robustly exemplify the traditional agreement hallmark of Verbs. Given the vociferous split in the late 1960s between Chomsky and the “generative semantics” group around John Ross, George Lakoff, Paul Postal and James McCawley (see Newmeyer 1982: chs.4-5), it was natural enough that the division between Chomsky’s analysis of English Auxiliaries as “not Verbs” and Ross’s as “all Verbs” quickly became emblematic of the two approaches. In 1966 when Chomsky was at the University of California at Berkeley delivering the lectures for Language and Mind (Chomsky 1968), at M.I.T. Edward Klima entered the fray with an insightful and comprehensive course on almost all syntactic aspects of the English verbal grammar. He motivated a formal system that seemed to arrive at a synthesis of Chomsky (1965) and Ross (1969) and at the same time captured, with two elegant devices, essentially all advantages of both.29 The pillars of Klima’s synthesis were (1-45) and (1-46): (1-45) Separation of AUX and V. All uses of be and have, but none of Modals, are lexically inserted under V. Klima made a sharp division between (i) an open class category V for all words capable of synchronically hosting agreement inflection, including be and have, and (ii) a closed class category labeled AUX for Modals and Tense suffixes (later renamed INFL and then I in Chomsky 1981; 1986).

29 Klima and Ross both accepted Chomsky’s affix movement rightward. As for the English auxiliary do, Klima claimed his system was compatible with both Chomsky’s derivationally late do-support and Ross’s do-deletion (of a correpsonding deep structure grammatical verb). So these shared aspects were taken to be irrelevant for choosing among the alternatives.

32 

 1 English modals and be are not irregular verbs

(1-46) Movement to AUX of initial be and some have. Unlike all open class Vs, these two verbs pattern like Modals in AUX rather than requiring an auxiliary do. Klima noted that despite being verbs, these items, even so-called “main verb be”, shared what later came to be called the “NICE properties” of section 1.3.4 above: negation using contracted n’t, inversion in main clause questions, appearance in tag questions and in front of the sites of “VP-deletion”, a rule formulated in Lakoff and Ross (1966). More generally, in a given clausal domain, the operation of lexical insertion according to subcategorization treated be (and some have) like Verbs, while later transformational operations treated them like AUX, that is, Modals. In the early generative framework, this combination was a sure-fire sign of movement, so Klima assumed that be and certain uses of have must start as deep structure V and then transformationally raise to AUX, via what he called have-be Raising.30 For a later and more theoretically sophisticated formulation of this rule, see Roberts (1998). Klima’s analysis opened the door to expressing another broad descriptive generalization. Early generative studies had paid relatively little attention to which clausal types appear in English non-finite constructions, and which are excluded. When Klima presented his deep (not surface) structures that precisely located as many elements as possible (subject pronouns, modals, auxiliary do, negative and emphatic items, be and its many types of complements, participles expressing aspect, etc.), it became evident that infinitives, participles and gerunds more or less directly expressed deep structure VPs. That is, his system transparently distinguished deep structures of both English finite and non-finite clauses, once the distorting effect of have-be Raising was removed from base structures. This system so well captured the intricacies and variants of the English verbal system that it came to convince almost all Chomskyan generativists. Although 30 In December 2008, not long after Klima’s death, Ray Jackendoff wrote in a letter to a friend about his lectures on the English verb as follows. His excerpted recollection, reproduced with permission, perfectly matches my own: One of my most compelling memories of my early days at MIT was taking Ed’s syntax course during my second semester. He was so rigorous and so careful. I think most of the class was pretty bored, but Joe Emonds and I were eating it up. I still always cite (and keep in mind) his three-hour class on all the possible ways to do do-support – before or after inversion, do-insertion or do-deletion – and how they fare in all the constructions in which do appears (none of them perfectly!). I’ve always taken this as a paragon of how to do linguistics properly. I’d like to think it’s carried over in my own style of work. There is no doubt in my mind that finally, all of Government and Binding ate it up as well.

1.4 Interactions between I and V 

 33

Klima never published his arguments and integrated results, most are reproduced in Jackendoff (1972; 1977), Emonds (1976: ch.VI,), Palmer (1979), and Roberts (1993: ch. 3). While the terms AUX and have-be Raising in this analysis often got replaced by the category I (INFL) and V-raising respectively, the ideas remained the same, and to this day Klima’s analysis, frequently unattributed because not published under his name, is the most usual generative treatment of the English verbal system.

1.4.4 The cons of be-movement: finite copulas as Alternative Realizations Given the lexical notations developed in section 1.4.1, it is no longer necessary to use a V-raising transformation to account for surface features that are not in their canonical positions. It is straightforward to specify all the finite forms of the English copula, including their position in I and their various D features, in terms of Alternative Realization. The requirement that the heads of their VP sisters must be empty follows from the Invisible Category Principle (1-36), without invoking trace theory. Emonds (1994: section 2) discusses in detail several disadvantages of transformational have-be Raising, compared to a treatment in terms of grammatical lexicon entries. In brief, these are as follows: (1-47) Implausible consequences of have-be Raising a. Non-productivity. Transformations should not apply to only a few members of a category. It is as if Wh-fronting were restricted to only some Wh-items, with others always remaining in situ. b. Non-uniform application. If all uses of have start as V, some move obligatorily, some optionally, and some never; see section 2.7 for details. c. Split surface suppletion. If be raises to I, it must then split into 5-6 separeate finite forms. It is as if verbs fronted by movement split into distinct forms depending on person and number. d. Ad hoc filtering. Lees (1960) notes two contructions that use only finite copulas and never be: the future with going to and the infinitive of obligation. If a landing site in I for raising be is unavailable, e.g in infinitives and participles, these VP constructions would require an ad hoc filter for examples like (1-48). In a lexical treatment, the nonfinite variants will not be inserted.

34 

 1 English modals and be are not irregular verbs

(1-48) John is/ was {going to forgive her/ to reimburse her}. * John should / could {be going to forgive her/ be to reimburse her}. * We found them (be going to get married/ to be to move out soon. No justified or widely accepted transformations have such a disparate set of properties. Surface differences as in (1-47) are typical of lexical distinctions among grammatical morphemes in a given language, and indicate that the English finite copulas should be analyzed by lexical rather than transformational devices. Except for the Realis feature IØ, the dissociated features on the finite copulas are all related to their base positions in accord with the defining structural condition of Alternative Realization. The Person and Number features are canonically located in the subject DP, a left sister to a projection of I, while the canonical positions of Past and Neg (ain’t) are on the head of the VP sister of I. (On the position of the Past, see the next chapter.) These alternatively realized features under I and the Invisible Category Principle (1-36) force the finite V position for the English copula to be empty. This zeroing effect of Dissociation/ AR occurs in many other familiar constructions. For example, the comparative and superlative suffixes on adjectives are simply Dissociations/ AR of the “Degree Words” more and most, and their presence entails, in Standard English at least, that the Degree Word position itself be zeroed: (*more/ *too) bigger, (*most/ *so) hungriest.31 A final property of English auxiliaries to consider is that none of them appear to assign any semantic role ( = aka theta roles ) to their subject or complement phrases. Since theta roles such as agent, experiencer, etc. are generally assigned by lexical head categories, especially verbs, it correctly follows that modals, if they are Is and not Vs, will not assign such roles. Under the verb-raising approach to auxiliaries, Roberts (1985) proposes that verb-raising into I is a property of any English V which assigns no theta roles, and in this sense is predictable. If so, this would nullify the advantage of treating them as non-verbal. While this property appears to be historically a pre-condition for lexically reanalyzing a V as an I, his proposal falls short of a descriptively accurate synchronic generalization. Thus, while agreeing with Roberts that an

31 Another instance is the null N found after the English compound pronouns such as somebody clever [N Ø], anything big [N Ø], etc. The AR phenomenon is cross-linguistic: in the applicative constructions of the Bantu family, where several dissociated features of heads of PP complements are realized as verbal suffixes, and in these configurations the canonical positions of the features they realize must often be null (Baker 1988: ch. 5). As shown in Emonds and Ostler (2006), these PPs with empty P heads (“applied objects”) are adjacent sisters to the V head dominating the AR suffix, just as (1-34) requires.

1.4 Interactions between I and V 

 35

item in I, whether or not a V, cannot assign theta roles, the implication is not bi-directional; that is, some verbs heading VPs also assign no theta-roles. In today’s English, consider the verb get; as argued in Kimball (1973), get is the inchoative (change of state) counterpart to both be and have, and thus shares with be many co-occurrence frames, including use with AP and as a passive auxiliary. (1-49) Mary {got, was} sick. Mary {got, was} taken to the station. Be and get in such uses cannot plausibly be said to differ with respect to theta role assignment. Yet in all such frames, finite be uniformly acts like an I, while finite get uniformly does not. (1-50) Mary {*gotn’t/ didn’t get} sick. Máry {wasn’t/ *didn’t be} sick. {Was/ *Got} Mary taken to the station? Did Mary {*be /get} taken to the station? Along the same line, other “linking verbs” such as seem, become, stay, etc. never raise out of V, even though they are related to theta roles just as be is. So Roberts’s condition involving theta roles cannot predict which verbs should move from V to I, since several verbs satisfying it do not move. Each V that “raises” would still need to be stipulated ad hoc. Additionally, such a condition is cross-linguistically implausible, since there are several candidates for V-movement in German and Dutch, and none is limited by anything resembling such a condition.32 In summary, traditional grammar says that the morphemes in (1-43) are finite forms of the verb be, but more accurately, they are Is that license such forms with an empty V. As observed earlier, a regular and expected agreeing copula should be *bes (compare she sees them), since English third singular agreement is never otherwise irregular.33 Similarly the finite past form, even if irregular, should at

32 Eliminating have-be Raising in Modern English does not conflict with Roberts’s (1993) diachronic claims (i) that the loss of more general V-movement was due to a loss of morphological agreement, and (ii) that the possibility of a V being reanalyzed as I was due to an item’s not having theta roles to assign. 33 In three grammatical verbs says, does, has., the stem is shortened, but the suffix is otherwise regular.

36 

 1 English modals and be are not irregular verbs

least alliterate with be. But no such forms of be exist.34 The arguments from Emonds (1994: section 2) summarized here thus show that English finite copulas are each entries from the language’s grammatical lexicon, conforming to Alternative Realization and the Invisible Category Principle, rather than the results of Klima’s classic transformation of have-be raising.

1.5 The two truly verbal auxiliaries of English I have now characterized nineteen auxiliary (I) forms of English which have no verbal behavior and lack both the interpretable features and positions of V. Consider, however, the two English verbs, do and have, which both have multiple uses with the fully regular verbal behavior given in (1-17). For any of these uses in (1-51a-b), it would be very misleading to call them “auxiliaries”. (1-51) a.

Underlined uses of do as regular verbs: To do one’s work well is a social virtue. What you were doing is difficult. Don’t do so without asking permission. Should we always do our best? b. Underlined uses of have as regular verbs: Does Mary have to finish this week? They have all they need. They are having a walk right now. We will have John help us.

Even so, these two verbs have other uses in which they must appear in I: (1-52) a. Underlined uses of do as a verb in the I position: They didn’t have walks on workdays. Does he own any property? Don’t get vaccinated if you are ill. Do be on time if you can. b. Underlined uses of have as a verb in the I position. Bill hasn’t taken a walk today, has he? Had he ever taken a long trip? Ann has got enough money, hasn’t she? Hadn’t you better see a doctor?

34 The verb forms be/ bes may seem far-fetched to speakers of Standard English, but they are not inherently implausible or outside the system of English grammar. Some nonstandard dialects of American English allow be or bes in certain environments. For example, so-called “invariant” be is used to express habitual action in African American English in a sentence like He be walking every day. The Lumbee tribe of North Carolina uses invariant bes with a range of meanings, but mostly to express habitual actions or enduring states, as in She bes my best friend. For some discussion of these features, see Wolfram and Schilling (2016: chs. 7 and 8).

1.5 The two truly verbal auxiliaries of English  

 37

It can be seen that these auxiliary uses of do and have in (1-52) exhibit the NICE properties of I, while their uses as main verbs in (1-51) do not.35

1.5.1 Verbs in I as functional category heads The basic profile of the auxiliary uses of do and have is that these originally open class verb heads have developed secondary uses as grammatical or (more widely called) “functional” heads in I. Such semantically impoverished uses of originally full lexical verbs are termed “dummay auxiliaries” in Newson and Szécsényi (2012). Like them I agree that these two V are inserted late in derivations, after the level or branch to Logical Form.36 (1-53)

Properties of functional heads developed from open class lexical heads a. The semantic content of the original open class items is lost. (This is usually called “semantic bleaching”.) b. Remnants of morphological properties may be retained, but their meanings are lost or obscured.

Regarding (1-53a), the auxiliary do with the NICE properties is not itself an Activity verb (for example, doesn’t own is well-formed), and neither the perfective auxiliary nor the idiom had better denote possession. As for (1-53b), auxiliary have and do retain past and agreeing forms, but both lack participial forms. Moreover, the idiom have got has no past, the idiom had better has no present, and it is difficult to maintain that the perfective has beaten has a present meaning to match its present tense form. (1-54) Susan has got a cold this week. *Susan had got a cold last week. Your friend had better see a doctor. *Your friend has better see a doctor. False reasoning; the past heartbeat may have been her last: Mary’s heart has just beaten, so she must still be alive.

35 In perhaps archaic, perhaps especially some British English, the main verb have can optionally appear in the I position: Have you everything you need? Had he enough time to prepare? Chapter 2 treats various uses of have in more detail. 36 This grammaticalized use of the auxiliary do began in the fifteenth century and spread through England in the sixteenth (Lightfoot 1979). Its use in imperatives appears to go back further.

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 1 English modals and be are not irregular verbs

The question now is, what do these secondary uses of two verbs in the I position imply about the general relation of the categories V and I, which up to now are sharply distinct in this chapter’s analysis? A strange logic seems to have influenced analysts who claim that all English auxiliaries are somehow disguised verbs. If in a sample of twenty-one types of dogs we found that only two had some clear feline DNA, would one conclude that therefore, all cats are somehow dogs? The reader may think that I must have misworded this, but indeed, this bizarre conclusion is exactly parallel to concluding that the split behaviors of do and have somehow suggest that the other nineteen pure auxiliaries in I must also be verbs. Under scrutiny, the logic is nonsense. The item-specific behaviors of do and have have no bearing on the separateness of the categories I and V.

1.5.2 Bleached Nouns and Verbs as functional category heads By looking at another parallel in English syntax, we can see that the split categorial behaviors of do and have in no way imply that auxiliaries are somehow always verbs. Consider the parallel between the clausal I-VP structure and the D-NP structure of extended nominal projections. While accepting Abney’s structures, I differ when he takes Determiners (the, this, that) and I to be structural parallels. As a reviewer observes, “D + NP forms a robust constituent, which can front, pronominalize, etc. There is no evidence that I + VP is a constituent, on the contrary, VP fronts and pronominalizes separately.” The real parallel to I in an extended noun phrase is the Quantifier/ Numeral category, meaning that the appropriate symbol for DP should in fact be QP. Since this volume is principally a study of verb structures, the reader interested in nominal structures should consult Veselovska (2001), Emonds (2001) and Emonds (2012) on arguments for Q being the head, and its right sister NP as the counterpart to VP. For example, the NP sister to Q can move independently like VP, and also receives it own Case: Not much was eaten of leftover turkey.37

37 Many syntacticians have provided cross-linguistic empirical support for the claim that these structures are parallel; perhaps the best of such arguments are those for Abney’s (1987) “DP Hypothesis”. According to Abney, maximal nominal projections contain a highest functional category head D (dominating for instance demonstratives and certain quantifiers), and this D is a sister to NP, yielding a structure [DP D – NP] that is parallel to the clausal structure [IP I – VP] justified in this chapter.

1.5 The two truly verbal auxiliaries of English  

 39

Within studies of DP structure, it is frequently observed that a few lexical nouns have become fully grammaticalized synchronic quantifiers presumably located in D, for instance, a lot/ lots and a ton/ tons as illustrated in the synonymous (1-55a-b). (1-55) a. b.

Having a lot of money gives lots of teenagers tons of ideas about spending it. Having tons of money gives a lot of teenagers a ton of ideas about spending it.

As these examples show, these two Ds have exactly the properties in (1-53a-b). They are originally open class lexical nouns, but both the lexical content of lot and ton and their grammatical meaning of singular versus plural have been entirely lost in their use as quantifiers. All four quantifiers simply mean “very much/ very many”, with no other distinction except stylistic (tons is more colloquial and recent than lots). The point I now want to make is almost frivolous if it is phrased in isolation as a general question about determiners. Has any linguistic analysis of nominal phrases ever taken the archaic morphology of the quantifiers lots and tons as an argument that other determiners (every, each, some, any, the, which) belong to the category N rather than D? Closer to true is that such reasoning would be so pointlessly odd that it has never crossed anyone’s mind. Rather, a typical conclusion would be that these quantifiers are just accidents of linguistic evolution, a minor point about a few English grammaticalized metaphors, signaling nothing more than their historical (and ongoing) status as lexical nouns. These two polyfunctional nouns (lot, ton) thus do not blur in any way the distinctness of the categories D and N. Let’s return to the two English verbs do and have, which in some uses have all the V properties laid out in (1-17), but which also appear with residual morphology in the functional category sister to VP. Analogous with lot and ton, these two auxiliaries have secondary lexical uses as Vs in the position of the functional head I paired withVP. It is of course necessary to formally specify these uses, but these specifications do not bear on the fundamental and sharp distinctness of the I and V categories. The next section will syntactically specify the auxiliary do. The treatment of the auxiliary have is related to other issues about how English expresses the verbal feature PAST, and so is integrated into the next chapter.

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 1 English modals and be are not irregular verbs

1.5.3 Do-support: A V in the position of IØ The unmarked, most basic transitive Activity verb of English is do: do something nice, do the work, do what you like, do the bedroom, do harm. This do has no additional semantic specificity, beyond the Activity expressed in LF by the category V itself. (1-56)

Unmarked transitive verb. V, +___DP, do

As reflected in its use as a pro-form for VP in do so and do it (1-57), the main verb do is incompatible with a Stative interpretation. (1-57)

Mary disliked John (*and Susan did so as well). We knew the answer, (*even though our pupils didn’t do so). It’s nice to own a house, (*but your friends shouldn’t do it at this time). He wants a second child (*more than his wife does it).

The auxiliary use of do is different. This verb, underlined in (1-58) in NICE constructions (clausal negation, question inversion, tag questions, emphatic assertion), is not a main verb and is compatible with both Activity amd Stative verbs.38 (1-58)

a. b. c. d.

Susan doesn’t drive/ own a car. Did she buy/ need a lot of old clothes? You imitate/ resemble Bill, don’t you? This city did too need/ try to clean up its air.

In generative terms, these uses of do were first accounted for by Chomsky’s (1957) deservedly famous rule of do-support, which greatly simplified the description of the NICE properties. Since this auxiliary do is always in complementary distribution with the modals and finite copulas, do-support must place the verb do in the I position, even though it shows number agreement like a V. The syntactic category V of auxiliary do is therefore dissociated from a base position inside VP. For this same reason do in I also loses the Activity interpretation of its canonical V position. That is, Stative verbs as in (1-58) (own, hate, resemble, need, etc.) are compatible with do-support, even though they cannot be replaced in (1-57) with the Activity pro-VPs do it and do so. Finally, since the “auxiliary do” is always

38 Do with an inverted so is an auxiliary and not related to the uninverted VP do so. Consequently, inverted so is acceptable with ellipted stative verbs: Mary disliked John and so did Susan.

1.5 The two truly verbal auxiliaries of English  

 41

Realis (IØ), it must be located in I. Its lexical entry can be formalized as (1-59), with I as its initial feature that shows where in trees it is located. (1-59)

Do-support. IØ, V, do

Since the V in (1-59) is not initial in the entry, it is dissociated, and the auxiliary do in I alternatively realizes the head of the VP that it modifies. In this case, the Invisible Category Principle (1-36) cannot apply to the canonical position of V in VP because an empty V in examples like (1-60) would violate Pragmatic Completeness (1-33), repeated here for convenience. (1-33)

Pragmatic Completeness. Head Vs can be interpreted only if they are (co)-referential with overt lexical items.

(1-60) *Mary didn’t [V Ø] the laundry yet. Cf. Mary didn’t [V do] the laundry yet. *Does Bill [V Ø] whatever he wants? Cf. Does Bill [V do] whatever he wants? To be able to combine the entries (1-56) and (1-59), the complete lexical entry for English do requires a technical device that is perhaps not so typical. Recall that (1-37) specifies that the syntactic position for a vocabulary item α is the first grammatical category in its lexical entry. Consequently, in the combined entry for do, the first category can be an optional IØ. Choosing I gives rise to the [V do] being inserted under Realis I. (1-61)

Combined entry of the unmarked Verb. (IØ), V, +___DP, do

On the other hand, if the optional IØ is not chosen, the tree location for inserting do shifts to V, yielding the simplest English transitive activity verb. Whether or not do is under I, the morpheme is still a V and hence available for the finite verbal suffixes specified in (1-38).39 One might question the presence of the feature +___DP with an item inserted under I, because the right sister of I is always VP. But since only the major lexical categories (V, N, A, P) can have different subcategorization choices for comple-

39 These suffixes appear on a V under I or adjacent to I; this can be expressed formally by making the contextual part of the frame +I__ optional and writing instead +I (___), V, +___DP in this entry for do. I will adopt this revision in discussing the auxiliary use of have in section 2.7.

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 1 English modals and be are not irregular verbs

ments (Abney 1987), it is a plausible convention that features such as +___DP are disregarded for items in non-lexical heads such as I. Hence the compact single entry (1-61) simply amounts to putting (1-56) and (1-59) together without further modification. In conclusion, the last two sections have shown that there are two special English grammatical verbs do and have (verbs that lack open class marked semantic features), which can be dissociated from a canonical V position as head of VP. They then occur under the next highest head I. As dissociated/ AR verbs, these two morphemes lose any canonical Activity interpretation, as well as any other semantic specificity (such as ownership or theta role assignment). The I position, for modals and finite copulas, remains syntactically 100 percent distinct from the canonical V position, with the consequence that when the morphemes do and have appear under I, they act not as Vs (except for morphological remnants) but as Is, exhibiting all the NICE properties (1-25)-(1-31). In particular, the general condition/ lexical entry for spelling out do under I is given as (1-61).

1.6 Methodological conclusions and commentary 1.6.1 Generative conclusions on clausal structure On the basis of the English paradigms studied in this chapter, we can propose eight structural generalizations for the “top” of English clause structure (the highest part of most trees). (1-62) Key points of the English auxiliary-verb system: (i) The Modal category I and the Verbal category V have no common properties. (ii) Unmarked I means Irrealis and is the functional category head of a clause. Its sister is a VP. (iii) IØ means Realis and is the basis of English Subject-Verb Agreement. (iv) Unmarked V means Activity, and is also the basis of imperative forms. (v) Each V has exactly three completely regular inflections (-ing, -ed, -s), except for around 200 irregular Past forms that replace -ed (See chapter 3 for more on this.) (vi) Finite copulas alternatively realize under I the Stative Verb feature VØ and cause the following V to be empty. (vii) Only two grammatical V secondarily appear in I, have and do. (viii) Auxiliary do in I alternatively realizes a canonical V but doesn’t make the latter null (Ø).

1.6 Methodological conclusions and commentary 

 43

Many of these points find their origin in traditional English grammar, but the proper formulations of most of them conflict with various truisms that get passed down as unchanging grammatical lore.40 The lexical entries for the central grammatical morphemes of the V/I system are given above as (1-23), (1-38), (1-42), (1-43), and (1-61).

1.6.2 The myth of auxiliaries as verbs: The legacy of “parts of speech” It seems that most myths and stumbling blocks in current English grammar are intimately linked to essentially immutable beliefs about the “parts of speech”.41 As traditionally given prior to a generative perspective, these are: Noun, Verb, Adjective, Adverb, Pronoun, Preposition, Conjunction, Interjection, and possibly Article. These categories date from classical times, and at the outset were defined in relation to Latin and Greek inflectional patterns, either those of the part of speech itself, or those determined by a given part of speech in a given context. To continue to use the exact same set as an unchanging basis of grammatical analysis is like trying to do modern physics on the basis of Aristotle. In this chapter, the property of a part of speech that has captivated grammarians (especially of Indo-European languages) is person/ number agreement on verbs with a subject Noun Phrase, one of the key discoveries of classical grammar. Person and number agreement has since come to be felt as a sure sign of a single unified category Verb. With respect to the Modals, it is not that Modern English modals agree with their subjects, but that they descend from forerunners in Middle English and Germanic that did. Furthermore, synchronically they replace subject agreement, or “stand in for it,” and so, in a roundabout and irregular way, the modals “represent” agreement. Hence, reasons the traditionalist, modals must still be verbs. A second mistaken idea related to the first is the belief that any items that agree with the subject overtly, such as the finite copulas, must a fortiori be verbs. As a result, the empirical data shown here, demonstrating that these finite forms (are, is, was, etc.) have no verbal properties, is accommodated only by a convoluted recourse to the verb be being highly and uniquely irregular. So entrenched is the traditional belief that subject agreement is a property of verbs that no 40 Here are several examples of such misstatements: “To make a yes-no question, invert the verb;” “The principal irregular verbs of English are modals and the verb be;” “Tense and/or Agreement is the main functional category above VP;” “The verb be raises to the I position”; “English has two different verbs do.” 41 This should not be interpreted as claiming that the parts of speech are myths, but that stubborn beliefs in certain properties of the different categories become the basis of the related myths.

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 1 English modals and be are not irregular verbs

amount of irregularity has been able to dislodge it, even among the staunchest advocates of generative grammar. It remains to be seen whether one work, this one, dedicated to straightforwardly using the data of Modern English, can do any better in budging this monumental pillar of the parts of speech temple.

1.6.3 The perennial return to grammatical square 1 Over the decades, many researchers without any background in academic linguistics have wished to apropriate some kind of “theory-independent” but still reliable description of English grammatical categories. These include those who propose to base English syntax on some (often novel) version of formal semantics, computational linguists who construct text or sentence parsers, researchers of a mathematical bent who feel that English grammar can be better formalized, computational lexicographers, and designers of grammatically tagged English language corpora. These researchers typically, in fact almost without fail, share two opinions about currently formulated English grammar and category systems, which can be expressed in the imaginary discourses in (i) and (ii): (i) “What has been done up to now, by centuries of traditional grammarians and decades of feuding structuralists and generativists, is an unenlightening muddle created by ivory tower scholars with no command of modern formal logic and clear scientific thinking. To begin new linguistic projects (semantics-based formal grammar, a computerized parsing system, a new mathematical model of language, syntactically tagged corpora, and so on), it’s more efficient and rational to simply ignore these earlier and ongoing linguistic studies, and start over.”42 (ii) “On the other hand, one cannot start from zero. Some labeling system is needed as a basis for formalizing the new insights to be realized in the ambitious new projects, so one should use a system that has withstood the test of time and remained constant through otherwise endless linguistic debates. That reliable system of categories is the one used for centuries in secondary schools throughout the western world, namely the unchanging traditional list of parts of speech.” 42 I freely admit only sketchy acquaintance with these several approaches to language study, not enough to precisely cite works that seem to make the assumptions I have just faulted them for. Nonetheless, over half a century, I have read taken together a lot of such literature and attended many dozen academic talks in these fields of endeavor. As a result, I have developed the views in this conclusion but admit that they are impressionistic and not rigorously formulated.

1.6 Methodological conclusions and commentary 

 45

Because of this widespread two-step rationale, the unchanged, written-in-stone list of parts of speech is not some dusty remnant of the past, but rather the central theoretical construct in most, even nearly all, “new” mathematical and logical models of grammar, in the advanced “tagged corpora”, in the sophisticated parsers of automatic translation, computational lexicography, and similar current linguistics projects. These projects rarely incorporate or retain any significant parts of what is taken to be barren academic linguistic modeling, so that any misleading properties of the parts of speech system as traditionally presented carry over unmodified and undetected into the most advanced “new models” of representing English grammar. The fact that such properties have often been convincingly debunked by modern linguists is lost, subsumed under supposedly useless “endless linguistic debate.” These opinions are reinforced by the impassioned rhetoric between pro- and anti-Chomskyans, which strikes newcomers to the field as more evidence of the need for linguistics to start over, and not examine in any detail linguistic arguments about the status of a central category such as Verb. Such categories (parts of speech as traditionally conceived) end up being accepted as the only reliable legacy of linguistic scholarship. Since traditional grammars never distinguish I and V as separate parts of speech, the new approaches alluded to above perpetuate and build on this error, a rather fundamental one, missing essentially all the generalizations formulated and motivated in this chapter. Namely, the most up to date new technical projects in language study quite regularly miss the fact that clausal structure is built around two paired structural elements I and V, and not one. Once we get to that point, we will at least be at square 2.

2 The single English Past morpheme –ed / -en 2.1 The location of ±PAST in English clause structure Every standard analysis of English grammar, traditional, structuralist, pedagogical and generative, takes for granted and elaborates on the idea that the language contains two distinct verbal suffixes that express, with somewhat different semantics, the “pastness” of verbal meanings. One is a finite past tense suffix –ed under V that alternates with a third singular present tense suffix –s (showed/ shows, cleaned/ cleans, washed/ washes). This suffix is replaced by special finite past tense forms for about 100 irregular verb stems: (2-1) English irregular finite pasts: ate (= eat+ed), broke (break+ed), drank, drove, flew, gave, grew, ram. rang, saw, spoke, swam, took, went, wrote, etc. A second suffix, often written –en in grammars, is a special form for an active past participle (used in the present perfect and past perfect tenses). This suffix also doubles as a mark of the passive participle (to be analyzed in chapter 6). For all regular verbs and about half of the roughly 200 irregular stems, this “perfect participle” and the finite past tense have the same form: for example, (have) cleaned/ handed/ washed for regular verbs, and (have) cut/ dug/ found/ quit/ sold for irregular verbs. For these latter irregular English verbs, neither the finite past nor the past participle are formed with the suffix –ed. For the rest of the irregular verbs, including those in (2-1), past participle forms differ from the past finite, often ending in –en: (2-2) English irregular participial pasts: eaten, broken, drunk, driven, flown, given, grown, run, rung, seen, spoken, swum, taken, gone, written, etc. The feature system of English verb suffixes in Halle and Marantz (1993) analyzes both the finite suffix –ed and the active participial suffix –en with the feature PAST. Though they give no explicit arguments for labeling the participle this way, there are good reasons to accept their conclusion, perhaps the most obvious and convincing being the undisputed intuition of native speakers that the perfect of an activity verb can report only Event times unmistakably in the past (Leech 2004: ch. 3; Zagona 2007).

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110734379-003

2.1 The location of ±PAST in English clause structure 

 47

(2-3) The girls have eaten this morning. He has never flown during his college years. I have rung you several times. We have done the work already. For more thorough discussion of the semantic “pastness” of English syntactic perfects, see Stowell (2007: sections 5.1–5.2 and 2008: section 1). (2-4) Past Events. The Event Times of finite pasts V-ed and of active participles V-en (with a non-passive auxiliary) are both unmistakably interpreted as past. Thus, Mary has already fallen/ Mary already fell down the stairs and I have just now eaten/ I just now ate are all incompatible with Mary now falling or my eating at the present moment. In addition to (2-4), a second reason for analyzing V-en as past is that in constructions other than the finite present perfect, this form is compatible with specifically Past Time adverbs. Such constructions are exemplified in (2-5) and (2-6); see Emonds (1975) and Hoffman (1976) for additional specific contexts and examples. (2-5) If VP has an I sister that is a modal (a) or a past tense with counterfactual meaning (b), the past participle (underlined) is compatible with past adverbs. (a) Mary must have rung you last week. Prices need not have fallen yesterday. To know that information would have been helpful last month. (b) If she had written the letter the day before, he would have it now. I wish we had grown tomatoes last summer. (2-6) If VP lacks an I sister, for instance in participles, gerunds and infinitives, the (underlined) past participle after have is also compatible with past adverbs. Having taken leave of us yesterday, she avoided the storm. I forgot about having seen this movie last year. To have suffered so when he was young hurt his chances. (2-7) In Standard English, only if the auxiliary have is in the I position (in the “present perfect”) is it incompatible with past adverbs: *Mary has rung you last week. *Prices haven’t fallen yesterday. *She has taken leave of us yesterday. *Have you seen this movie last year?

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 2 The single English Past morpheme –ed / -en

Analyses which focus only on uses of simple tenses in finite clauses often miss these two general patterns (2-5) and (2-6), which reveal the pastness of the English perfect construction. On the basis of these paradigms and the interpretation (2-4), we can conclude that the suffixes –ed and –en both have the lexical specification , PAST. Moreover, because they are in complementary distribution, they can be considered to constitute a single abstract morpheme.

2.2 Unifying the past suffixes –en and –ed From the preceding section, I conclude that for all regular verbs, the English Grammatical Lexicon contains a single productive suffix on verbs that is canonically interpreted as past tense. The core of the lexical entry for this item is then (2-8): (2-8) English Past (preliminary). , PAST, . . ., –ed The symbols < > indicate an X0-internal subcategorization frame, as introduced and amply justified in Lieber (1980). Such frames are not limited to categories in canonical positions; a V in any head position is subject to inflection. Consequently, inflections but no phrases are allowed inside an X0, a maximal word or “M-word” (Embick and Noyer 2001).1 Thus, V-ed in the boy washed is also a V.2 To construct the full lexical entry of the Past morpheme, one needs to add that the host V must be either (2-9) finite (its V or VP is a sister of I), or (2-10) a participial complement of a semantically empty Stative verb, have or a linking verb such as be.3

1 Highly idiomatic, non-productive “quotation compounds” such as do-it-yourself shop and another ne’er do well are exempt from this. 2 If a suffix has its own lexical category, for example like the adjectival suffix –able (specified as A, , POTENTIAL, . . .), this category, like word-internal right hand heads in compounds, projects to the combination V-able, which is then an Adjective like any other. This consequence is due to the word-internal Right Hand Head Rule of Williams (1981). I maintain the standard assumption of the first fifty years of generative syntax that open class roots such as woman, door, food, see, owe, die, clever, big, hungry, on, with, toward, etc. are vocabulary items listed with lexical categories N, V, A and P. 3 Stowell (2008: section 2) gives arguments that the semantic Pastness of perfect constructions cannot be attributed to have, though later, admitting that he lacks a formal analysis, he maintains that tree structures associated with have should somehow indirectly contribute to Pastness.

2.2 Unifying the past suffixes –en and –ed 

 49

(2-9) Finite Past Distribution. English finite Pasts V-ed must be the highest V in IP, either (i) the head V of a VP sister to a Realis IØ, or (ii) a past auxiliary V under I. English places a rather strict limit on where active participles can appear: (2-10) Active Participle Distribution. An English non-finite Past V-ed (i) can and (ii) must immediately follow a stative verb, such as be or have. The next examples illustrate (2-10); as is conventional, the symbol *(α) means that α must appear. (2-11) a.

Mary must [VP *(have) rung you last week]. Stock prices need not [VP *(have) fallen yesterday]. To [VP *(have) found that out last month] would have been helpful. b. Customers [VP *(having) registered their bags] can now enter. The last person to [VP *(have) solved that problem] became famous. Sue is an important person to [VP *(have) met when I was young]. c. Mary must [VP *(be) finished with her work]. Those guests need not [VP *(be) gone yet].

If the finite past and the active past participle morphemes are indeed the same, their lexical entries should combine into one. Their two contexts IØ___ (for finite Pasts: Mary did well) and VØ___ (for active Past Participles: Mary has done so/ Mary is now done) can be economically conflated using the brace notation. This suggests that the proposals here for formalizing lexical notation are on the right track.4 (2-12) English Past lexical entry. +{IØ / VØ}___, , PAST, –ed We are now able to determine the position where the feature PAST is interpreted in Logical Form. (2-13) The feature PAST seems canonically located in English under the highest interpreted V in VP; other positionings seem exceptional.

4 In the succinct entry (2-12), the word-internal frame notated with places no restriction on V, either of content or position. But the category IØ in the phrasal subcategorization frame is initial in the lexical entry and so by (1-37) must be in its canonical position.

50 

 2 The single English Past morpheme –ed / -en

This statement now helps derive both (2-9) and (2-10). It accounts for (2-9i) and (2-10i) directly. As for (2-9ii), the feature Past under I is an instance of Alternative Realization (1-34). The requirement in (2-10ii), the fact that English active participles not only can but must be complements to linking verbs, has a different source; it results from the stipulated phrasal subcategorization frame VØ___ in entry (2-12). Section 2.4 returns to further consequences of (2-12). For now it serves as a close to accurate generalization about the distribution of –ed. However (2-9) and (2-10) are eventually formally integrated into a single lexical entry for the Past, we have now parted company with the descriptive tradition of English grammar that maintains the ancient Proto-Germanic dichotomy between finite (–ed) and non-finite (–en) past forms. A unified entry for all Pasts such as (2-12) moreover reflects the untutored and spontaneous tendencies of today’s English speakers: (2-14) The number of irregular verbs in Standard English is steadily decreasing, and outside the Standard, their loss is even more rapid. In my speech, alight, burn, clothe, dream, learn, shear, smell, spell, spoil and thrive are obligatorily regular, though the site http://www.usingenglish.com/reference/ irregular-verbs, which includes 210 “common” irregular verbs, still lists irregular forms for them. It also lists knit, leap, spill, sweat and wed, which for me are now optionally regular As for nonstandard American, it is inexorably abandoning past and passive participles with a separate syllable –en, replacing them with a single Past form in both finite and participial contexts: the window (has/ got) broke; my dog ain’t never bit them/ been bit; that letter never got wrote, etc. Similarly, irregular finite pasts with orthographic a are also being replaced in nonstandard speech: he come in real late last night; the church bells never rung; she already swum a mile. One aim of this chapter is to stress what seems to be almost a fait accompli in today’s emerging productive English verbal system: in addition to third singular present agreement and the suffix –ing, with few exceptions open class verbs accept only a single Past form, which fully conflates what current as well as traditional grammars call the finite past tense, the past participle and the passive participle. All are formed with the same productive suffix –ed. This single Past form can remain irregular: broke, come, rung, took, wrote, etc. But overall:

2.3 The canonical positions of verbal features in trees 

 51

(2-15) Regular English Verbs. All English verbs have exactly four morphemically distinct forms.5 Section 2.4 below proposes a lexical analysis in terms of allomorphy for the relatively few and decreasing number of verbs which retain a special finite past root, like those in (2-1). This section is the chapter’s formal keystone, accounting for the “elsewhere” distribution of the suffix –ed by means of a parsimonious disjunctive context feature in lexical entries, whose exact workings will be explained there.

2.3 The canonical positions of verbal features in trees Uncontroversially, English finite verbs are specified in the Phonological Component (“PF”) as +Tense, +Past, or +Tense, -Past ( = present tense). I further assume that both their bare forms (infinitives), as well as the –ing forms (to be analyzed in chapters 4 and 5), are simply unspecified for the Tense feature. If need be, this can be written as -Tense. Once we go beyond these surface forms, it is not obvious as to where the feature Tense is canonically located in basic tree structures. Is it generally a feature associated with V, or is it of a different nature? In generative grammar since Chomsky (1957), Tense has been assumed to enter underlying trees (to “merge”) not under V but rather at the top of clausal projections and outside VP, in what much work, including this volume, terms the I or Tense position, the position studied and justified in detail in chapter 1. In general, the lexical entries of individual grammatical morphemes, such as (2-12) for the past tense –ed/–en, are based on universal syntactic configurations, what current research frequently calls “the functional sequence” of Universal Grammar. The interested reader can consult Williams (2009) and Rizzi and Cinque (2016) on this concept. The configurations they propose are similar, though not always identical, to structural positions where syntactic features are interpreted in Logical Form (“LF”).6

5 That is, two past stems of an irregular verb Vi are both syntactically conditioned allomorphs in the same morpheme sequence Vi – PAST. In nonstandard American, the auxiliary do has the past form did in the I position (outside VP), while the undifferentiated finite and participial past of do is done: Who left that window open? I didn’t do it, she done it, and she’s done it before too. 6 This study’s general framework is accurately included in Distributed Morphology, in the sense that it distributes the traditional “machinery” of morphology to other components of grammar (Halle and Marantz 1993: 13). In this book, however, there is no need for their autonomous level

52 

 2 The single English Past morpheme –ed / -en

(2-16) Canonical positions of features. Canonical positions of categories/ features are defined as those where they receive their standard LF interpretations.7 Also, as we saw in chapter 1 for the category V, head categories such as V, P, D, etc. directly represent in LF the basic meanings usually at least vaguely associated with them. Special semantic labels often used to represent these meanings (Activity with V, Location with P, Reference with D, respectively) are in fact redundant. As with Stative Verbs in chapter 1, only marked members of these categories, those with the Cancellation Feature +Ø, lack these meanings; they are otherwise automatically part and parcel of the LF categorial representations. In large part, the first two chapters of this book, developing ideas in Veselovská and Emonds (2015), propose specific and distinct canonical tree locations for the most central categories of verbal modification, their Tense and Mood. As for Mood, these authors argue that the fundamental division of grammatical mood in language is based on the feature ±REALIS on I: in English, [I, +MODAL] is the Irrealis Mood, while [I, –MODAL] is the Realis mood. The empirical basis of this feature name is that in simple declarative sentences, the speaker is committed to the certain truth of a Realis main clause predication (Mary knows the answer), but not to that of an Irrealis main clause (Mary should/ must know the answer). (2-17) Canonical position of the feature (IR)REALIS. The canonical position of ±REALIS is I, the functional head that is a sister and external to VP. So now, what about Tense? In contrast, this chapter has argued that the canonical position of the feature PAST is rather inside VP (2-13), conflicting with a long-standing generative assumption that associates the underlying position of Tense with a functional category outside VP.8 of Morphological Structure. Emonds (2000: chs. 3–4) lays out and further justifies the general architecture of this “morphology-free” approach. 7 A category is “realized in a position” by being phonologically spelled out or by being licensed as empty by some principle of syntax, such as Binding Theory, conditions on ellipsis, etc. Other such principles are Economy Principles, such as in (2-38) below. Some morphemes seem to have some special or nonstandard LF interpretations outside their canonical position. For example, a WH-feature on D can signal co-reference when the DP is in the COMP position in a relative clause, the feature SOURCE in French (de ‘from’) can optionally signal –DEF when located on D, etc. 8 Veselovská and Emonds (2015) argue for the generalizations in (2-17) and (2-18) on the basis of the superficially different morphosyntax of Czech and English verbs. They claim that the view (of traditional grammar) that Tense is a feature of V leads to better analyses, not only for other

2.3 The canonical positions of verbal features in trees 

 53

(2-18) Canonical position of the feature PAST. The canonical position of ±PAST is the highest interpreted V in VP (Veselovská and Emonds 2015).9 As we will see, the qualification “highest” here is actually redundant. In other words, PAST is interpreted on an LF head of a VP, but exactly which VP depends on language-particular lexical entries of possibly uninterpreted grammatical verbs. Thus, some sequences interpreted as “IrrealisFinite – VPast” (last year, we would (have) walked there) require a second auxiliary have in English, but in Czech such a sequence is grammatical only without one. A feature F’s canonical position is also where it is pronounced in PF, unless F is transformationally moved or alternatively realized elsewhere; cf. the AR Principle (1-34) in chapter 1.10 Thus in sentences of neutral discourse, English and Czech both regularly spell out (pronounce) their productive finite Past Tenses in canonical positions under V. In many other widely studied languages (for example, French and Japanese), words morphologically marked for finite Past or Present Tense do indeed appear in the highest V positions in a clause, whether or not that V surfaces under I. Moreover, in languages such as Japanese and Korean, these same Tenses appear in parallel fashion in head A (Adjective) positions. So I take this recurring pattern as a key point in this chapter, and revise (2-18) as follows: (2-19) Universal canonical position of the feature Tense. The canonical positions of the feature ±Past are under the highest V or A heads of a VP/AP. Keep in mind that this is a one-way implication; V and A heads often lack Tense. In such cases, Tense Features are not specified or spelled out in every canonical position; which heads they appear on in a language depends on the entries specifying Past in its Grammatical Lexicon. Moreover, it can happen, as it does in English, that Past is spelled out only on V and not on A; this implies that the English entry for Past, repeated here for convenience, needs to specify that the

languages but also for English. Thus, both the English Past –ed and its Czech counterpart –l, which “actually expresses the Past Realis [+T, -M],” regularly surfaces not under I, but under the V head of the VP sister of I. 9 The past copula was in I alternatively realizes the canonical past feature on the highest V in VP. As is usual for AR, this canonical position is an empty category, here an unmarked stative verb in the same position as began in began being eaten. 10 As justified in these first two chapters and in Veselovská and Emonds (2015: section 6), lexical entries of the English auxiliary verbs have and do are unusual in realizing the finite Tense features under I. There is no counterpart to this in Czech.

54 

 2 The single English Past morpheme –ed / -en

host of Past is V and not A. PAST must be canonically on V or A, so the category in the entry for PAST determines which is used.11 (2-12) English Past lexical entry. +{IØ / VØ}___, , PAST, –ed Section 2.5 of this chapter will deal with clarifying and unifying the somewhat puzzling grammar of the non-finite active participial form V-en, but first we concentrate on fully lexically specifying the finite pasts in (2-1). Once these forms, regular and irregular, are characterized, we will turn to the generalized past forms in (2-2) that serve as both finite and participial pasts.

2.4 Selecting finite past forms (“second principal part”) of English verbs It is perhaps not widely appreciated that an English verb’s finite past tense, that is, its “second principal part”, appears only in positive, finite, declarative clauses without modals. In all other types of clauses, periphrastic auxiliaries such as did and had always replace it. This means that finite past forms appear only in the context IØ – [V ___].12 Recall from section 1.3 that IØ stands for non-modal, finite Realis forms. The same holds equally well for the irregular finite pasts of lexical verbs as in (2-1). Only open class verbs have item-particular purely semantic features, notated fi rather than Fi, so their verbs with irregular finite Pasts are lexically represented as in (2-20). (2-20)

Lexical entry for a finite verb with an irregular Past:13 V, fi, PAST, +IØ___, ran  run

  

   

11 The frame +{IØ / VØ}__ is a syntactic subcategorization feature specifying that V-ed is selected as head of a VP phrasal sister to either a Realis I or to a stative V (have, be, seem, . . .). The latter include the classic periphrastic combinations have– en and be –en. 12 There is one English construction where finite verbs might appear to invert, but even here, V cannot be spelled out separately from I: Down the street ran/ *did run Helen. 13 The first category specified in this entry is V, which locates where in trees the entry applies, namely to the head of a VP. Moreover, the context feature means that ran must be linearly adjacent to I. This indicates that adjacency to a head category X is not impaired by material inside XP, in line with the obvious intent in the affix movement of Chomsky (1957). Nonetheless, VP cannot be separated from I by material outside VP, such as not/ n’t or inverted subjects, although it can be separated by adverbs inside VP: Sam barely ran 50 yards.

2.4 Selecting finite past forms (“second principal part”) of English verbs 

 55

By virtue of the frame +IØ___ , the VP projection of the first line of (2-20) must be linearly adjacent to an I specified as Realis (overt or covert; and not a modal).14 The similar positioning of PAST in both (2-12) and (2-20) is thus evident. But this latter entry still does not cover irregular forms in past participles; we return to this in Sections 2.5 and 2.6. As observed in Chomsky (1957), finite forms of a lexical content verb in (2-21) are disallowed with a clausal negation not/ n’t or a positive polarity counterpart, so or too. (2-21)

He (*not) flew (*not) a lot during his college years. The girls (*so) ate (*so) their breakfast this morning. I (*not) rang (*not) you several times. We (*not) did (*not) the work already.

That is, in these contexts, acceptable finite forms must be among those that independently appear in the I position of chapter 1, as seen in (2-22). (2-22)

He did not/ didn’t fly a lot during his college years. The girls did so eat their breakfast this morning. I did (not/ too) ring you several times. We didn’t do the work yet.

These data illustrate that clausal negation and polarity items interfere with the adjacency of I – VP required by lexical entries of finite pasts such as (2-20); that is, the items not/ n’t/ so/ too are generated to the right of I but exterior to the clause’s main VP. Many syntactitians have interpreted the blockage in (2-21) to mean that polarity items, including clausal negation, are intermediate functional category heads between I and VP, either Neg itself or the polarity category Sigma Σ of Laka (1990). However, treating these categories as heads raises more problems than it solves, at least for English.15 Thus: 14 The Cancellation Feature Ø on α does not mean “α is meaningless,” but rather “α lacks the usual LF content of its main syntactic category.” For instance both for and about (usually) lack any locational sense and are hence PØ, but a poem for John and a poem about John nonetheless differ semantically by virtue of different interpreted features on for and about. In chapter 1, IØ means an I that is Realis (±Past but not a Modal), and VØ means a Stative Verb (any verb with features which is not an Activity Verb). 15 There are numerous languages, for example, Japanese and Modern Standard Arabic, in which clausal negation is inflected as a separate stative verb. The analysis in the text is not appropriate for these systems.

56  – – –

 2 The single English Past morpheme –ed / -en

NEG/Σ never inflects, nor inverts, nor exhibits NICE properties of I (section 1.3). Nor does NEG/Σ seem to have its own Specifiers, unlike other heads. Nor is Negation linked to extended verbal projections in any special way.

As an alternative, keep in mind that NEG can occur with a range of other maximal projections, where it is called constituent negation; for constituent negation on VP contrasted with clausal negation, see Čakanyová (2018). Constituent negations are underlined in the following. (2-23) At Christmas I saw [DP not a lot of relatives] but just my parents. My cousin seemed [AP not very healthy]. Let’s have our picnic [PP not right beside the road]. You just can’t again [VP not visit your parents during the summer]. An additional relevant consideration is that if NEG/Σ were an intermediate head between I and VP, its status as a head would block the Alternative Realization of the stative verb be by finite copulas in I, and thus undermine the analysis of English finite copulas of section 1.4.2. As that section showed, this analysis offers attractive solutions for several puzzling aspects of the English copulas, and so should not be easily discarded in favor of a quite problematic claim that NEG is a functional head in Extended VPs. I thus propose that English clausal negation, and its possible extension to a polarity category Σ, is inserted into trees to the right of I as a left sister of VP, without projecting its category features to a phrase.16 In this way, Neg/ Σ has the desired effect on English finite verbs: because it removes the adjacency of (a Realis) I and VP. Neg/ Σ is thus incompatible with REALIS pasts being realized in the V position. In sum, spelling out finite Tense (or Number Agreement) in a lexical V is possible only if the linear adjacency of the IØ to VP is respected. Formally, the linear adjacency of I and VP (needed for the AR of Tense suffixes) is interrupted either by inserting clausal negation or by I to C movement (aka subject-auxiliary inversion). (2-24) English Clausal Negation. Neg, +IØ___, not

16 Other functional categories which seem to appear with phrasal sisters, but do not project their own category to a phrase, are the focus particles, such as English even, also, and only. For a detailed study of such particles in Japanese and their role in projections, see Aoyagi (1998).

2.5 Selecting active past participles (“third principal part”) of English verbs 

 57

In English, open class lexical Vs do not move to IØ, and so follow not, whereas in French, whose entries for pas ‘not’ and point ‘not at all’ are like (2-24), finite Vs raise to IØ, and so precede NEG. In order for (2-24) to insert clausal negation, a clause must obviously already have items merged into the I position. For this reason, the finite copulas, members of the I category, must be inserted before (2-24) applies; this is why not doesn’t block finite copulas in I even though it does block the derivationally later AR of Realis Tense under V (“affix lowering”). Both processes, are independent of any stipulated context feature; rather, the derivational order is: (2-25) a. insert finite copulas in I, satisfying AR adjacency of I and V; b. insert sentence negation, using I; c. insert Realis Tense suffix under V, satisfying AR adjacency of I and V.17 Under this scenario, it is quite plausible to envisage the position of sentence negation as the the next highest head above IP. This option would imply that (2-25b) is an instance of Alternative rather than Canonical Realization of NEG. In Chomsky’s (1957) earliest work on English verbal syntax, the “affix movement” or “lowering” of the finite past suffix –ed onto V was essential. However, there is no longer a need for any transformational movement to account for these forms, since all result from either specified forms in lexical entries for irregular verbs as in (2-20), which must in any case be lexically stipulated, or from the alternatively realized suffix in the unified entry for the regular Past (2-12).

2.5 Selecting active past participles (“third principal part”) of English verbs This section will examine consequences of the lexical entry for the single English Past suffix, combining –ed with the participial allomorph traditionally notated as –en. It will propose a formal and more accurate lexical specification for the distributional statement (2-10) arrived at earlier.

17 The asymmetry between the two local English processes, “Tense lowering to lexical V” (blocked by an intermediate NEG) and “be-raising to I” (not affected by an intermediate NEG) has puzzled syntacticians ever since the latter rule was first proposed. Recently, Newman (2018) attributes the difference to be-raising being a head-to-head movement, while Tense on V results from a different mechanism which she calls amalgamation, akin to AR here and the morphological merger of Halle and Marantz (1993). Her proposal of be-raising, a rule which section 1.4 argues against, has led me to propose a different solution to the puzzling asymmetry.

58 

 2 The single English Past morpheme –ed / -en

(2-10) Active Participle Distribution. An English non-finite Past V-ed (i) can and (ii) must immediately follow a stative. This formulation suggests that the distribution of the active participle depends on a grammatical characterization of the auxiliary have; this will follow in section 2.6. Here I first determine the categories in the structure selected by the auxiliary have, that is, the nature of the participial form V-ed. One apparently iron-clad generalization about English participles, noted by Bresnan (1982), is that, across all irregular forms and idiomatic uses of English verbs, the active perfect participle is invariably identical to the passive participle, to be discussed separately in chapter 6. And as we will see then, there are strong syntactic, selectional and morphological reasons to analyze every use of the passive participle, including the so-called “verbal passives”, to be adjectival – that is, to assume that their internal Right Hand Head passive suffix –ed/ –en is of the category A, and that this head category A projects to the participial word and phrase. This fact about passive –en as A might suggest also analyzing the identically formed active past participle as [A V [A –ed]], since the basic internal structure of both is identical. This would in turn suggest that all participial phrases are selected by a lexical feature +___A, similar to the linking verbs with this frame that accept a limited range of active (non-passive) participle complements:18 (2-26) Your neighbor seems already gone/ grown up/ done/ settled down/ finished. These lexicalized active adjectival participles after linking verbs are not productive; this active participle is productive only with the auxiliary have. Thus, unlike with be, the past participle of any verb can combine with have: (2-27)

a. Susan has already left/ fainted away/ collapsed/ argued a lot/ run off. b. *Susan was already left/ fainted away/ collapsed/ argued a lot/ run off.

Moreover, the participle V-en after have, in contrast to this form after be, does not seem adjectival in any other way: – Perfect participles as in (2-27a) do not have an LF interpretation as an inherent property; that is, they lack the standard interpretation of adjectives. – No other use of the English verb have selects AP as a complement.

18 These examples in (2-26) can’t be passives, because any putative active counterparts are either ungrammatical or not synonymous with the examples.

2.5 Selecting active past participles (“third principal part”) of English verbs 

–

 59

While like English, Spanish uses the same suffix –do in perfect and passive participles, in passives the suffix agrees like an A but in perfects –do never agrees.19

English (and Spanish) active past participles are thus plausibly As only when selected by standard linking verbs (be, seem, remain, etc.), but when selected by have they are V and not A. This contrast confirms the formulation of entry (2-12), repeated again for convenience, in which A does not appear. (2-12)

English Past lexical entry. +{IØ / VØ}___, , PAST, –ed

Because of the frame VØ___, a non-finite (participial) form must be selected by a stative, e.g, have or be (2-10). It is not excluded that –ed can be an Adjectival Right Hand Head when VØ is be, but this is incidental in active participles. In English, what counts is being a complement to a stative head. By (1-37), the Past form [V V-ed] must be in a canonical V position, that is, an interpreted head of VP. When finite, this VP must be adjacent to a Realis I, due to the context feature +IØ ____. But when selected by have, this VP can either be a sister to I (if have is in I) or it can be a bare VP sister to a have in V, for instance, in should have eaten, having eaten, to have eaten. Section 2.7 will investigate how and where this auxiliary have is inserted. To conclude this section, it may be useful to review the two kinds of contextual frames that appear in entry (2-12). The feature with brackets and the features +IØ___ and VØ___ without them. As introduced in Section 2.2, the former refers to the word-internal frames of Lieber (1980), where the adjacency required is linear. The use of a frame +B___ without brackets is an extension of the classical frames of Chomsky (1965: ch. 2), whereby a subcategorization feature of a head H can specify not only the category of a complement (using +___B) but also the category of the higher head B that selects H (using +B___). In both cases, we need to clarify what kind of adjacency is required by the lexical combination H, +B___ and H, +___B. (Here +B___ = +IØ ___and H = [V –ed] ). A notational convention for these features must specify that modifiers of the selected B or H, both its left side Specifiers and right side Complements, don’t interfere with the structural adjacency of H and B. As another example, a lexical subcategorization feature +___D, which selects a DP object of a V or P, means that the selecting V or P must

19 Czech has an agreeing active past participle (the “-l” form), but the latter’s agreeing forms differ from those of adjectives, while the Czech passive participle agrees exactly like an A.

60 

 2 The single English Past morpheme –ed / -en

be adjacent to a phrasal projection of D, but ignores intermediate material inside DP. Likewise, a predicate attribute selected by V, +___A, implies that the selecting V is adjacent to a predicate AP though not necessarily to A itself: (2-28) That seems/ looks [AP [NP a hundred meters] long]. Melanie remains/ sounded [AP [AP very selfishly] unwilling to help]. (2-29) Phrasal Adjacency. The lexical notations H, +B___ and H, +___B mean that a selecting constituent is adjacent to a sister phrase whose head is selected. The adjacency in both types of features and ( and +V___) plays a role in generating a past infinitive such as in to[V have][VP quickly [V [V faint] ed]away].

2.6 How and why many English verbs continue to be irregular 2.6.1 Lexical entries and structures for irregular verbs Even though two different early Germanic bound morphemes, for finite and non-finite Pasts, have become a single productive English Past -ed, some hundred very frequent irregular verbs in Standard English still have different finite and non-finite Past allomorphs. A formal lexicon, i.e. a formal grammar, has to represent these in some systematic way. A preliminary to expressing this requires fixing ideas as to where in trees given syntactic features must, may or cannot appear, or in other words, their canonical positions. For Tense, this has been stated in (2-19). But when, as with the feature PAST, language-particular variation is also involved, accurately formulating lexical items such as (2-20) plays a crucial role in fixing the details of a feature’s distribution. Irregular verbs furnish a probably extreme case of the language-particular syntactic variation allowed by Borer’s Conjecture (see the Introduction). Current irregular English verbs are of two types, those whose finite and participial pasts are identical, as with the productive combination V–ed, and those like the verbs in (2-1)-(2-2), for which these two forms differ.20

20 In diachronic Germanic studies, these verbs are called “strong”, probably because philologists liked their highly varied but originally regular patterns.

 61

2.6 How and why many English verbs continue to be irregular 

The first type with a single irregular Past includes Past stems such as cut, dug, found, hung, kept, left, lost, met, put, quit, slept, sold, stood, told and the like. The same form can be used for both their finite and participial pasts: (2-30) He (has) found the answer. She (has) kept quiet. Our team (has) lost. Such stems are frequent but non-productive substitutes for bi-morphemic *finded, *keep-ed, *lose-ed, *cut-ed, etc. In fact, before children learn these irregular forms, they frequently use unabbreviated regularized forms. Since the lexical entry for the productive Past suffix –ed in (2-12) already specifies the language-particular contexts of the finite and participial realizations of the feature Past, it seems plausible that the entries for the irregular pasts don’t repeat these contexts in each open class lexical entry V, fj, but instead replace the sequence V-PAST with portmanteau morphemes:    

(2-31)

Entry for a verb with a single irregular Past: V, fj, PAST, found    find 

The lower case symbol fj stands for purely semantic features that are not used in syntactic rules and principles (Emonds 2000: ch. 4). The second type of irregular English verbs consists of those with three distinct “principal parts”, as earlier exemplified in (2-1) and (2-2). In nonstandard speech, many of these verbs have already lost the third distinct form. But in the Standard, these verbs are the only ones with distinct allomorphs in the two environments for the feature PAST. Moreover, the consonantal onset of all English open class irregular verbs is identical for the three forms; in a fully accurate formal description, this onset should be factored out and paired with a verb’s purely semantic features fi. I don’t develop this novel notation here.  +IØ___, flew  Verbs with two irregular Past forms:21 V, fk, PAST,   +VØ___, flown   fly 

     

(2-32)

21 All three allomorphs of an English open class verb must have the same initial consonant cluster, that is, they must alliterate: fly, flew, flown. For eat/ ate/ eaten, the uniform consonantal onset cluster is Ø, in accord with the identical rule determining what alliterates in Old English poetry. The grammatical verb go can violate this generalization because it is not an open class item (Emonds 2000: ch. 4).

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 2 The single English Past morpheme –ed / -en

Although e.g. flown doesn’t itself reject a higher linking verb such as seem, the latter requires a complement with the category A, which (2-33) lacks: *The plane seemed flown well. Recall from the discussion of (1-40) in chapter 1 that a frame specifying a syntactic feature such as I___ in an item’s lexical entry requires that the feature be adjacent to the phrase (here VP) where the item is spelled out, This requirement excludes *The bird [I did/ could/ Ø] not/ so [VP flew away]. Given that the current syntactic literature rarely provides language-particular lexical entries and doesn’t employ any uniform format for them, it seems appropriate to furnish some examples of structural representations of the verbal forms to be generated by these entries in the English grammatical lexicon: (2-33)

Table of English Past lexical entries and structures: Word structures

Verbs with Regular Pasts

Irregular Past Verbs

a. Finite Past Tense

IØ –

I Ø – [VP V, PAST]

IØ = non-Modal I

  [V finish] [PAST ed]

[VP V, PAST]]

b. Active Past Participle VØ – [VP V, PAST] VØ = have, linking verbs

[V finish]

[PAST ed]

went, flew VØ – [VP V, PAST] gone, flown

The non-traditional revision of the English verbal system developed to this point claims that any lexical verbs V have at most four morphologically distinct realizations.22 That is, children learning English hear three (not four) productive inflectional suffixes on verbs, and they create verbal paradigms with exactly four underlying members: (2-34) a. b c. d.

an uninflected lexical root, an essentially “elsewhere” or default form;23 a third-person singular present agreement form, treated in chapter 1; a form V-ing (cf. Emonds 1991a), discussed in chapters 4 and 5, and a single past form V-ed (2-12), which can be replaced by irregular Past forms: bent, bled, brought, cut, dug, felt, fought, found, hit, kept, led, left, lit, met, etc.

22 Recall that section 1.4.2 has shown that the finite forms of the English copula are not V, but AR forms in I. So the canonical verbal forms of be are be, being, been and Ø. 23 This volume uses ‘elsewhere’ as throughout linguistic history, going back to Panini and Sanskrit. It means, ‘in all contexts besides that spelled out for the form under discussion’.

2.6 How and why many English verbs continue to be irregular 

 63

When the verb is finite, about 100 roots replace these latter with a second irregular form: ate, flew, fell, rang, went, etc. That is, in Standard English, a set of about 100 other verbs have entries on the model of the right column in the English grammatical lexicon (2-33); they have a second allomorph used for Vs with a canonically positioned feature PAST, if their VP is a sister of an immediately preceding [I, REALIS]. Thus for roots like fly and ring, the past/ passive forms are flown, rung (more economical in performance than bi-morphemic fly + ed, ring + ed), and the additional special forms for [V, PAST] with a left context +[REALIS]___ are flew/ rang.24 These two irregular forms are coalescing into one more rapidly in nonstandard dialects, but to some extent also in the standard. For example, the regular nonstandard past/ passive form is wrote; in some nonstandard speech written survives only as a lexicalized passive adjective (for instance, perhaps in the written word and handwritten letters). These differences apparently reflect a difference/ conflict which we now examine, between “syntactic economy”, which favors irregular forms, and “lexical economy”, which favors fewer of these irregular forms.

2.6.2 Contribution of irregular forms to syntactic Economy The great number of irregular tense and aspect verbal forms (some 300 in current Standard English), contrasts with the very few irregular agreement forms. This raises an empirical question about the basis of this difference, to be analyzed in more depth in the next chapter. In fact, irregular finite agreement stems appear in English (and in French as well) only occasionally in a handful of verbs, among a few of the roughly 20 verbs in their “grammatical lexicons”: namely as English third singulars does, has, says (*dos, *haves, and *says rhyming with ways) and as irregular French second plurals faites, êtes, dites, respectively ‘make’, ‘are’, ‘say’. In this regard, it should be noted that the real predictive dichotomy in the Lexicon is not between lexical and functional categories (N, V, A, P vs. all others), but between the four open class categories and the full range of closed categories, which can include grammatical N, V, A, P (Emonds 2000: ch. 4). Thus, in English (and French), only grammatical items can exhibit phonological onset suppletion (go/ went; good/ better).25 Similarly, only grammatical items can become auxiliary 24 This Realis in the left context can be in the I sister to the VP (the regular configuration), or it can be under the auxiliary Vs do and have, which are in I by virtue of the AR permitted by their own entries in the grammatical lexicon. 25 The distinction between the open class Dictionary and the closed class Grammatical Lexicon will be elaborated on and shown to play an important role in syntax in chapter 6.

64 

 2 The single English Past morpheme –ed / -en

verbs in I (have, do) or nominal quantifiers in Q (lots, tons). As determined by such diagnostics, the grammatical (closed class) verbs in current English are be, bring, come, dare, do, get, give, go/ went, have, hear, let, make, need, say, see, take, want and perhaps a couple of others. Irregularly pronounced agreements (does, has, says) are then restricted to this small class and never appear on open class verbs. Another notable characteristic of grammatical but not open class verbs is that they can have empty allomorphs. We have seen in chapter 1 that an empty allomorph of be systematically occurs after an English finite copula. Another example (Van Riemsdijk 2002) is an empty motion verb in many Germanic languages (but not Modern English.)26 (2-35)

Empty motion verb allomorph in German. Wir műssen ins Dorf (gehen), um Wein zu kaufen. ‘We must [go] to the town, to buy wine’.

The much larger classes of irregular open class heads always seem to involve a lexical category (V or N) which has a second feature whose canonical position is in the same maximal projection. Thus unlike agreement forms, a lot of [V, PAST] forms are irregular, as are indeed a lot of [N, PLURAL] forms. Besides the oft cited traditional lists of irregular English plurals for some animals and fish, there are considerably more in common usage: (2-36) kin, offspring, quid, sperm, squash, knives, leaves, loaves, analyses, bases, foci, loci, criteria, phenomena, formulae, alumnae, Chinese, Maltese, Viennese, etc. In contrast, and similar in number to irregular verb agreements, full fusions of Determiners with nouns are hard to come by (?nothing,?none), if they exist at all. Given the conclusion of chapter 1 that English modals and agreeing surface subject DPs are outside VP, and this chapter’s conclusion that Tense (and also Aspect, which by consensus seems closer to V than Tense is) is canonically inside VP, we arrive at a restriction on inflectional irregularity, which we can call “lexical fusions”:

26 Among other properties, this lexical item must be selected by a modal. *Wir bald ins Dorf, um Wein zu kaufen. ‘We soon [go] to the town, to buy wine’.

2.6 How and why many English verbs continue to be irregular 

(2-37)

 65

Local Fusion. Open class lexical heads can fuse only with modifying categories in their own maximal projection (and not in any other maximal projection).

This generalization accurately captures a strong limitation on irregularity; it explains, for example, why many verbs have irregular pasts or (in Slavic) aspect alternations, but no irregular agreements. But it still leaves open the question of why such irregularity should even exist. Why isn’t all inflection as invariant as English – ing, French –ons ‘first plural’, German –n ‘infinitive’, and Japanese ga ‘nominative’? It seems that particular grammars retain irregular and fused morphological forms, when they are allowed at all, because of an Economy of Representation Principle (Chomsky 1991). (2-38) is an explicit formulation, and here we are interested in (b-c). Collins (2001) agrees that (b) is necessary,but objects to relating it to Economy of Derivation.: (2-38) Syntactic Economy of Representation a. A given XP in LF should be realized with as few phrases as possible. b. A given XP in LF should be realized with as few words as possible. c. A given X0 in LF should be realized with as few morphemes as possible. A comparison of the lexical realizations of the Vs in (2-33) shows that the irregular forms in the right column are syntactically more economical than the regular forms in the middle. This is why regular inflected forms are not allowed (*goeder, *buyed) whenever the lexicon makes available ones that are fused, that is, irregular. This preference is the descriptive content of the Blocking Principle of Aronoff (1976), as discussed more just below. This of course raises an objection: doesn’t it then follow that every verb should have an irregular fused Past? The answer is negative because it appears that Syntactic Economy (2-38) is in competition with a sort of lexical or “Allomorphic Economy”, by which additional allomorphs in lexical entries are also costly. This competition between types of economy accounts for why the frequently used forms tend to be and stay irregular: since each instance of an irregular form contributes to Syntactic Economy of Representation in language use, the latter must play a role in language production and comprehension. Frequent use of economical (irregular, fused) forms must at some point outweigh the cost of learning/ adding an irregular form to the Lexicon in the service of Allomorphic Economy. The exact nature of this competitive “trade-off” cannot, however, be worked out at this time and so remains speculative: we cannot predict when some undifferentiated past forms like rung or shook will replace rang or shaken.

66 

 2 The single English Past morpheme –ed / -en

In these terms, Alternative Realization (often ultimately giving rise to fused morphemes) is part and parcel of Economy of Representation, because it favors derivations in which the content of two separately interpreted constituents α and β are fused and expressed as one word, in the position of one or the other. To take an example outside verbs, the English grading adverb more can be alternatively realized in the adjective that it modifies under a single A0, yielding, smaller, rounder, etc. A substantial number of such analyses using AR, as in Emonds (2000: ch. 4; 2007: ch. 7), lead to the following general conclusion: (2-39) Economy of unmarked AR. In the absence of lexical stipulation, the canonical positions α of an alternatively realized feature F must be empty.27 As a result of (2-39), we find *more smaller, *more rounder. Similarly, when the combination of a copular V + Past is alternatively realized under I (by was/ were), the canonical position of V must be empty. Though in this instance, this complementary distribution gives the impression of “be-raising” to I, AR and Economy of Representation make unnecessary such an undesirable item-particular transformation. Syntactic Economy of Representation is thus the factor that favors a verb with an irregular past over a verb stem with a productive suffix, whether the basic root or the irregular form of the verb is used.28 (2-40)

Mary rang/ *ringed/ *ranged you last week. Stock prices fell/ *falled/* felled yesterday. She took/ *taked/ *tooked a train yesterday. We grew/ *growed/ *grewed tomatoes last summer.

This analysis in terms of Economy subsumes the Blocking Principle of Aronoff (1976), which also privileges irregular forms over regular roots with a productive affix. The Blocking Principle is limited in its scope, however, and was not formulated from the more general perspective of Syntactic Economy (2-38) adopted here.

27 Lexical stipulations together with Principles of UG sometimes allow AR to “double” a nonnull canonically positioned morpheme. For example, the overt category V is doubled in do-support, and overt case assignment doubles various overt P in some languages but not others. Thus, Czech se ‘with’ must often be overt with Instrumental DPs, where its Sanskrit counterpart is not. 28 Curiously, this aspect of Economy would seem to be imposed rather late in the language acquisition process, since impressionistically, starred forms as in (2-40) seem to occur even in relatively advanced stages of child language.

2.7 The unique auxiliary have with the participle 

 67

2.7 The unique auxiliary have with the participle Throughout this section, I have compared my grammaticality judgments with those of other adult native speakers, one of American and one of British English.29

2.7.1 The category of the Active Past Participle Focusing on –ed, section 2.2 concluded that an open class V host with a PAST suffix must be the head of a VP in one of two quite disparate contexts: (2-41) Location of English verbs with the PAST suffix –ed: (i) Finite: their VP is a sister of [I, REALIS], or (ii) Non-finite: their VP is a complement of a Stative Verb such as have or be. As noted then in section 2.5, the suffix –ed of this participle (the allomorph previously notated as –en) is identical to the perhaps more frequent and certainly more studied passive participle suffix. As will be shown in chapter 6, the passive suffix –en is a word-internal Right Hand Head of category A, for example, in adjectival passives. Despite the identical form of the English active and passive past participles (for irregular as well as regular verbs), it is only the former that is a variant of a single general morpheme Past. Moreover, the Past suffix is never adjectival, either in the perfect construction with have or when finite (neither use of –ed gives rise to a property interpretation in LF). The structure of the English perfect tenses combines the stative verb have with a V whose internal structure is [V – [PAST ed]].30 The analysis here, putting together Lakoff (1966) and Ross (1969), is that English periphrastic aspects combine a structural head verb that is -Activity (have, be) with an open class verb. As these authors observed, the auxiliaries themselves are not Activity verbs (no imperaitves such as *Be doing without drugs; no progressive such as *Bill is having eaten). Consequently, English uses the same productive suffix –ed for two syntactic morphemes, passive and past. However, this is no theoretical anomaly. There are

29 Except where noted, their judgments and mine agree. 30 Spanish also has an identical suffix -do for its periphrastic passive and its active periphrastic past tense. As in English, this latter suffix has no adjectival meaning and additionally, it exhibits no number/ gender agreement, unlike the Spanish passive suffix of the same form.

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 2 The single English Past morpheme –ed / -en

several inflectional suffixes with the same form as anoher derivational or inflectional suffix: – An adjective-forming use of the same –ed is frequent with Numeral-Noun compounds: three-toed, six-sided, many-faceted. – English uses the same inflectional suffix –(e)s with identical allophones for noun plurals and for possessive DPs. These two uses of the same phonetic morpheme have no syntactic category or context features in common. – Latin uses the same suffix, long i, for Dative singulars in all noun classes (save one) as it does for the Nominative plurals of nouns with stem-final low vowels. There are many other comparable pairs in other languages, especially those with inflectional Case systems such as Latin and Czech. We thus see that languages can easily use inflections of the same phonological form for morphemes with different syntactic category specifications. So it is not surprising that the productive English –ed doubles for indicating both Past and Passive verbs. The former use of the participle has been covered here, while the latter will be the subject matter of chapter 6.

2.7.2 The English perfect auxiliary In finite verbal forms introduced by a perfective have or the modal-like had better, the have in I is neither a main verb nor the head of a selected complement. Rather, these have are special “auxiliaries” that modify a following selected main verb, and have always been treated as such in traditional grammar. That is, unlike main verbs in a V position, these have neither lexically select among different phrasal complement types, nor are they selected by a predicate outside their clause.31 (2-42) English Auxiliary Verbs. In current natural English, the V have (i) can or (ii) must appear in I only if it selects a non-phrasal morpheme, i.e., in verbal idioms. What thus makes have and do special among English verbs is that their lexical entries include an option for inserting them other than in canonical V positions.32 31 Lakoff (1966) gives several examples of Vs selecting VPs; for instance, many verbs of mental activity do not select infinitival complements headed by stative verbs. 32 In this way they are like the non-canonical quantifier Ns ton(s) and lot(s) briefly mentioned in section 1.4.3, which are not in head N positions but are rather functional category modifiers of N.

2.7 The unique auxiliary have with the participle 

 69

The way to formally express non-canonical placement of V in a finite I has been exemplified for the auxiliary do, whose entry (1-61) of chapter 1 is repeated here. (1-61) Combined entry of the unmarked Verb. (IØ), V, +___DP, do In this volume’s notation for lexical entries, the first syntactic category or feature indicates the location in trees of the inserted item; cf. (1-37). Therefore, since in (1-61) do is inserted under I if an I is available (in finite clauses), but otherwise do is under V.33 Now, perfective have also appears in I if it can (if I is Realis), but otherwise it is in canonical V position. Its lexical entry is thus (2-43); in both uses, have is a stative VØ (Ross 1967) and selects a V in Past form: (2-43) English Perfect Auxiliary. have, (IØ), VØ, + ___ [V, PAST] Recall further that the lexical entry (1-38) in chapter 1 specifies the obligatory inflections of any V that realizes finiteness, either adjoined under IØ or in a VP sister of IØ. I repeat this entry:

 

Ø

    

 PAST, -ed  (2-44) Lexical entry for finite Tense suffixes. +IØ ___, ,  3rd, -PL, -s

The combination of the two entries (2-43) and (2-44) means that any have is a V, and if it is in IØ or is a head adjacent to a null I, have will obligatorily host one of the finite suffixes, -ed, -s, or Ø. Deriving these facts about the English auxiliary have thus completes the unfinished business at the end of section 1.5. Since entry (2-43) is formally rather compact, let me rephrase its contents. The perfective verb have, whether in V position as in (2-33b) or under a finite IØ, can always have a participle sister whose head is V, PAST. The auxiliary itself appears in I if it can, and otherwise as a canonically positioned Stative head V.34

33 One can ask, why doesn’t (1-61) cause every Realis (IØ) clause to contain an auxiliary do, with an alternatively realized V feature? The reason is an AR feature is not interpreted in LF, so such do would violate the Economy Principle (2-38b). An English auxiliary do is allowed only if the resulting structure expresses an LF that isn’t otherwise expressible, such as a negated or questioned clause. 34 There is no need to stipulate, as Chomsky (1957) does with a phrase structure rule, that perfective have cannot follow the progressive or passive auxiliary be. Since perfective have is itself stative, it cannot be in the progressive (Emonds 1976: ch. VI).

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 2 The single English Past morpheme –ed / -en

A final question to answer about the perfect concerns the contrasting semantics of the feature PAST on the auxiliaries do and have in the structures (2-45a-b). Keep in mind that [I, REALIS] is simply “longhand” for IØ. (2-45) a. The manager did/ does (so) have a look at all the new books.

IP Alternative Realization DP

The manager

I, REALIS,V,TENSE

VP, TENSE, ±PAST

IØ , V, TENSE, ±PAST did/ does (so)

V, TENSE, ±PAST V

±PAST

have

Ø

DP

a look at all the new books

b. The manager had/ has looked at all the new books.

IP “Secondary interpretation”; not AR DP

The manager

I, REALIS, V, TENSE

VP, TENSE, +PAST

IØ ,V, TENSE, ±PAST V, TENSE, +PAST

had/ has

V look

+PAST

PP

at all the new books

ed

In this latter tree (2-45b), TENSE in I is not a standard AR of a canonical Past Tense on V. If it were, the latter should be phonologically empty, as is typical for AR (2-39). But as traditional and generative grammars indicate, the (non-canonical) position of PAST under I has a separate “secondary” counterfactual interpretation, which I discuss below.

2.7 The unique auxiliary have with the participle 

 71

2.7.3 The contrast between the past and the present perfect Many pedagogical grammars of English seem mired in endless discussion of the difference in meaning and/or use between the finite past tense and the present perfect. Even so, the reported “Event Time” of the verbal action/ state in the perfect is unmistakably in the past: (2-46) a. Past vs. Present Perfect Jane (has) already finished her work. Few people spoke/ have spoken out about the new schedule. b. Past vs. Past Perfect The stock market (had) crashed when the Rockefellers sold their shares. That bell rang/ had rung every Sunday morning until last January. A widely agreed on semantic or perhaps pragmatic characterization of the difference between past and perfect is that a finite (present or past) perfect auxiliary introduces a separate “Reference Time” that follows the “Event Time” of a reported event. Thus, the perfect form verbs in (2-46a) have a present Reference Time, since the auxiliary have is formally in the present tense, while those in (2-46b) have past Reference Times, respectively when the Rockefellers sold their shares and last January. For discussion of the genesis and implications of this Tense/ Time scheme, see Zagona (1988: section 3.3, and 2007). Many English grammars note and even emphasize that present perfects as exemplified in (2-46a) and earlier in (2-3) are incompatible with past time adverbials, even though the Event Time of these clauses is in the past. Thus, modifying the predicates in (2-46a) and (2-3) with past adverbs such as yesterday, last year, and before you showed up results in ungrammaticality. Only (underlined) “Reference Time adverbs” as in (2-47b) are permitted. (2-47)

Present perfects with time adverbs: a. *Jane has finished with her work yesterday/ by early this morning. *Jane is finished with her work last week/ long ago. *Not many people have spoken about the problem before you showed up. b. Jane [I, -PAST has] now [V finish [PAST ed]] with her work. Jane [I -PAST is] by now [V finish [PAST ed]] with her work. Not many people have spoken about the problem since you came to work here.

To express the puzzling restriction on past time adverbs in (2-47a), analysts have devised various ways of labeling the times reported by active past participles and

72 

 2 The single English Past morpheme –ed / -en

their auxiliaries. As mentioned above, the English auxiliary [have, ±PAST], under the condition that it be in I and not V, seems to have a special interpretation of Reference Time, in contrast to the Event Time of a clause’s lexical verb. Thus, time adverbs in (2-47b) can only refer to a present Reference Time, and not to the past Event Times. (2-48) Secondary Tense. If Tense (that is, IØ) is interpreted in an I position rather than its canonical V position, then it refers to Reference Time, not Event time. Few treatments seem aware of the fact that separate Reference Times need to be hypothesized only when the auxiliary have is finite. After a modal or in a non-finite clause, no overt forms of the predicate distinguish between Event and Reference Times. In fact, as M. Čakanyová points out to me, we can probably dispense with the notion of Reference Time if Past is not in I. That is, whenever the perfect occurs other than in Realis clauses, for example with modals and in non-finite clauses in (2-5)-(2-6), past tense adverbials are acceptable, unlike in the present perfect.35 Descriptively, the appropriate general restriction on time adverbs as illustrated in (2-47) can be stated rather simply. (2-49) Past Time Adverbials. Verbal clauses (VPs, IPs) are compatible with past time adverbs only if their highest Tense has the value +Past. My account of the asymmetry between the finite present perfect (allowing no past tense adverbials) and all other uses of perfective have is thus based on separate interpretations of Tense in the distinct positions of I and V, as the latter were established in chapter 1. If the highest position of Tense is in I, and this Tense is not Past (as in present perfects), no Past adverbials are allowed, even if the Event Time is Past.36 A reader might ask whether it is typical to have different interpretive rules apply to differing placements of the same syntactic feature. That is, in this analysis, a Tense suffix (IØ) in a V position can be interpreted as an Event Time, while in an I position it can be interpreted as a Reference Time. The fact is, such polyfunctional 35 To account for this, more traditional analyses say that the perfect periphrastic in non-finite clauses is “ambiguous” between a “basic” perfective meaning and a second past tense meaning. This distinction is unnecessary in the account here. 36 This statement may seem stipulative, but compared to previous treatments, (2-49) is a simpler descriptive generalization.

2.7 The unique auxiliary have with the participle 

 73

uses of basic syntactic features are common and even central in both generative and traditional analyses. They go unnoticed because formal studies have paid insufficient attention to specifying exact syntactic positions of given syntactic features. Let’s reflect on some examples. Clause-initial WH-morphemes signal “Interrogation” in main and complement clauses, but English, French and several languages allow different interpretations when WH-morphemes introduce adjunct clauses: (2-50) LF interpretations of initial WH specifiers a. Primary: In main and complement clauses, WH means ‘Interrogation’. b. Secondary: In clausal adjuncts to NPs, WH means ‘pronoun referring to the immediately preceding NP’. These are called relative clauses. c. Secondary: In clausal adjuncts to VPs, WH means ‘indefinite proforms’: You will be late whatever train you take/ however quickly you walk. Another English syntactic feature SELF with double interpretations is found in the Reflexive Pronouns. These are primarily interpreted as having their own semantic (“theta”) roles when they are in argument positions (as direct objects, indirect objects, subjects, etc.). But reflexives are secondarily interpreted as simple emphatic pronouns when in apposition to a preceding noun phrase: The Prime Minister has herself traveled to the front. For yet another example of differing interpretations of a syntactic feature in different syntactic positions, consider the demonstrative pair this vs. that. With the pragmatics of ostention (pointing), the pair can be interpreted in Specifiers of both DPs and APs (this tall vs. that tall), but demonstratives can also have the pragmatics of referring to constituents in preceding discourse (this last date is better than that one mentioned earlier) only in Specifiers of DPs. This latter use is not available in APs. There can be thus no objection to allowing different interpretations of Tense in V and I positions. The distinction between Event Time vs. Reference Time in (2-48) is not somehow ad hoc or illegitimate. These distinct interpretations of Tense, in V and I respectively, are rather a basis for solving the long-standing puzzle of how the Past and Perfect Tenses differ; even though they have the same Past Event Times, in the perfect this Event Time is not the structurally highest Tense in the clause, and so by (2-49) is not eligible for modification by Past adverbials.

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 2 The single English Past morpheme –ed / -en

2.7.4 Insertion contexts for have in I in current English: Had better/ had best In this construction, besides the active participle suffix –ed, a second grammatical morpheme related to have is the adverb better in the idiom had [VP better . . .]. Best seems to be a less formal variant. In this expression had is necessarily in the I position: (2-51)

The mother had better/ best consult with a doctor, hadn’t she? Hadn’t she better/ ?best consult with a doctor? *Did she have better/best consult with a doctor? *She didn’t better/best have consulted with a doctor.

Unlike attributive and predicate adjectives, this use of better does not denote a property in LF. In this idiom, better is plausibly an adverbial adjunct modifying the lexical head of a following VP.37 Taken together, the two combinations have + V + [PAST ed] and had + [A better] + V, suggest an answer to a question put aside in section 1.4.3: under which condition(s) does the verb have occur in the I rather than the V position? The fact is, any have whose lexical contextual frame includes selecting a phrasal complement, such as the full DPs and infinitival VPs underlined in (2-52a), is always in the V rather than the I position. Whatever the grammatical history of various uses of the verb have, this statement holds in natural and unstilted Present Day English. Consequently, these have that select full phrases do not exhibit the NICE properties of items in I (2-52b).38 (2-52) a.

b.

Mary has/ doesn’t have the attention of many boys in her class. These guys have to move out. Do those guys have to move out? Your friend had a look at the gallery, didn’t she? We had a gardener dig up our yard before anyone else did. *Mary hasn’t the attention of many boys in her class. *Have those guys to move out? *Your friend had a look at the gallery, hadn’t she? *We had a gardener dig up our yard before anyone else had.

37 This implies that the idiomatic combination had better is not a constituent. Most likely, the idiom precedes a free VP, had better VP. Idioms of this type are common: can/ may as well VP, make ready to VP, do well to VP, etc. 38 My British English informant firmly rejects the examples (2-52b). Additionally, he does not use have as a causative, here or in other instances of this construction; he regards them as a formal usage that he doesn’t share, and uses instead We got a gardener to dig up our yard.

2.7 The unique auxiliary have with the participle 

 75

Hence the underlined selecting verb have in the V position is the main verb in (2-52a). As a V, it can also itself be the head of a selected complement VP (2-53). (2-53) Her parents don’t want Mary to have the attention of so many boys. The landlord expects those guys to have to move out. My friend stopped to have a look at the gallery. Sam liked the idea of having a gardener dig up our yard. Thus, in the collocations where have selects a full phrase, have is never in I. But when have selects only a sequence of morphemes (better + V, V+en), it appears in I rather than in V.

2.7.5 Insertion contexts for have in I in current English: The collocation have got A third locution where have must spell out as a finite form in I is the expression have got. In this third combination with a specific morpheme, as in the perfect tenses and the idiom had better, auxiliary have exhibits the NICE properties of chapter 1:39 (2-54) A poison has usually got an antidote. A poison hasn’t always got an antidote. Those students have got lots of duties. Have those students got lots of duties? John has still got two houses there. John’s got two houses there, hasn’t he? In discussing the have got construction, we need to also consider an archaic and increasingly hypercorrect variant of it, obtained by deleting got and leaving the simple present tense of the verb have alone in I:40 (2-55) ?A poison hasn’t always an antidote. ?Have your students lots of duties? ?John had two houses there, hadn’t he? 39 For many speakers, have got largely replaces the transitive stative verb have. 40 Examples of this type are often taken to be truly proper English, and are foregrounded in some British Council teaching materials. In contrast, my British informant’s comment is that the examples (2-55) are “very formal and affected, and should be corrected”.

76 

 2 The single English Past morpheme –ed / -en

In section 2.7.4, I proposed that have appears in I rather than V when it is lexically specified to co-occur with single non-phrasal morphemes rather than a full phrase complement. The use of the present-day collocation have got, synonymous with the verb have, is of this type. In this idiom, the NICE properties show that the have is in I, while got is the main V.41 In most dialects the idiom is necessarily in the present tense. (2-56) a.

Despite his family history, John’s got good eyesight. *Despite his family history, John had got good eyesight. b. Not all poisons have got an antidote. *Not all poisons had got an antidote. c. Julia has got more friends than Sandy. *Julia had got more friends than Sandy.

What shows that have here is in I is that it displays the NICE properties: (2-57) a.

John hasn’t got good eyesight. Has John got good eyesight? b. Hasn’t every poison got an antidote? Every poison’s got an antidote, hasn’t it? c. Sandy has got a chauffeur, but Julia hasn’t Julia’s got more employees than her brothers have.

By contrasting the synonymous verbs have and have got with an infinitive VP, both combinations expressing obligation, we can confirm that the verb have, when it selects a full phrasal infinitive, is in the V position, while the have with got is in the I position: (2-58) Have in the V position with VP: Ruth has to buy a new car. Does Ruth have to buy a new car? *Has Ruth to buy a new car? Ruth doesn’t have to buy a new car. *Ruth hasn’t to buy a new car.

Have in the I position with got: Ruth has got to buy a new car. *Does Ruth have got to buy a new car? Has Ruth got to buy a new car? *Ruth doesn’t have got to buy a new car. Ruth hasn’t got to buy a new car.

Structural and pedagogical grammars and even radio programs for “learning English” often imply that the main verb have inverts in questions and accepts the

41 In this section, the word got never has the sense of obtained or received; it always means have.

2.7 The unique auxiliary have with the participle 

 77

sentence negation n’t. Thus, these sources claim that, unlike any other English lexical verb, have can appear in I, as in (2-59): (2-59)

Ruth hasn’t a new car yet. Jim has lots of friends, hasn’t he?

Has Ruth a new car yet? Jim has time whenever Bill has.

This use of have in the I position typically conveys an archaic and/or artificial speech style. Whatever its connotation, I propose that these examples are generated with an optional null allomorph of the idiomatic V got, meaning examples (2-59) derive from those in (2-60): (2-60)

Ruth hasn’t got/ Ø a new car yet. Has Ruth got/ Ø a new car yet? Jim has got/ Ø lots of friends, hasn’t he? Jim has got/ Ø time whenever Bill has.

As confirmation of this proposal, note that the use of the past tense had of the verb in the I position leads to quite marginal examples, at least in current usage: (2-61)

?Ruth hadn’t a new car yet. ?Had Ruth a new car then? ?Jim had lots of friends, hadn’t he? ?Jim had time whenever Bill had.

However, this curious restriction of the verb of possession to present tense disappears in the analysis proposed here, if we derive the have in I in (2-60) from the locution have got, via a rule one might call “archaic deletion of got.” Since this longer locution is in any case limited to the present tense, as seen in the starred examples of (2-56), there is no potential source for the null allomorph of got in the examples (2-61).

2.7.6 The factor predicting when have is in I and when it is in V We have seen in this section that the distribution of English have can be predicted on the basis of two simple statements involving the distinct categories V and I proposed and justified in chapter 1: (2-62) Have in the I position a. English verbs which select (or are selected as heads of) full phrasal complements XP must appear in the canonical V position as heads of VP.

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 2 The single English Past morpheme –ed / -en

b. Certain English grammatical verbs (have and do) which do not lexically select full phrases XP can appear in I position as heads of IP. From this new perspective, we might expect some different behavior between a Past suffix –ed in canonical position (after a have in I) and one that is a lower Alternative Realization of Past (after a have in V, when I contains a Modal). Generally, all English participial suffixes contribute to LF, and so must be present in (even infrequent) structures.42 So in VP preposing, these suffixes cannot be absent. (2-63) He said the machine was operating well all morning, and operating well/ *operate well it was. He said the machine was switched on too soon, and switched on/ *switch on too soon it was. The same holds for the canonically placed (interpreted) active perfect –ed in V, when have is in I: (2-64)

He said the machine has often switched off too soon, and switched off too soon it has again/ / ?switch off too soon it has again. He said the machine had switched off earlier, and switched off earlier it had/ *switch off earlier it had.

The morpheme interpreted as Past Event Time in the examples (2-64) is the participial suffix, and so it must be present (= inserted in the derivation), before the level of Logical Form, that is, in what is widely termed “narrow syntax.” The above examples without it are marginal or fully ungrammatical. But when a Modal is in I, the interpreted Past morpheme in the highest VP is not the participle. The participial suffix then only alternatively realizes Past, and does not represent its canonical position. In the VP-preposing construction, this AR is ungrammatical. In sharp contrast to (2-64), the unsuffixed or bare form, underlined in (2-65), is the only acceptable option:

42 The passive suffix is crucial for subject-predicate co-indexing (ch. 6), and progressive aspect appears associated with –ing rather than be: I saw some prisoners die is not progressive, but I saw some prisoners dying is.

2.7 The unique auxiliary have with the participle 

 79

(2-65) He said the machine might switch off too soon, and switch off too soon/ *switched off too soon it could have. He said the machine had switched off earlier, and switch off earlier/ *switched off earlier it must have. There is a robust contrast here with the other participles in (2-63), where the bare forms were completely excluded. Formally, the reason for the contrast is that if a morpheme’s features play no role in LF interpretation, they are inserted only in PF, after the part of a tree constructed during a derivational phrase is “sent to LF.” The AR features of a participle suffix following Modal + have are among those that are uninterpreted. Consequently, this is the only time an English participial suffix is absent. According to the final version of the lexical entry (2-12) of this verbal suffix –ed, it must be in a V selected by a higher head have on its left. But in the VP preposing constructions discussed in this section, the fronted VPs are sentence-initial in the focus position, so late insertion of an alternatively realized –ed on the bare or base form V is not licensed, and this yields the crucial data contrasts in (2-65). Summing up, this chapter’s various sections have provided a relatively complete grammar of the English Past Tense allomorphs. In particular, sections 2.1 and 2.2 argue that both the finite and participial forms of the English Past Tense exemplify a single verbal suffix [PAST, –ed], and section 2.3 argues that the canonical position of PAST in trees is not the I position, as has been standard in generative treatments, but rather the V position (Veselovská and Emonds 2015), as in fact traditional grammars often assume. Sections 2.4 and 2.5 lay out how distributional generalizations about the irregular forms of open class verbs are formally expressed in lexical entries, and section 2.6 tentatively accounts for why these ancient irregularities persist today. Finally, a rather lengthy section 2.7 analyzes the various idiosyntactic uses of have, focusing on the perfect constructions but also describing the collocations had better and had got. The chapter terminates with a generalization about when have is in I and when it is in V. Perhaps the most salient results are the conflation of the finite past and the past participle as a single morpheme and the generalizations about when have is in I and not a head of VP.

3 Regular inflections and contractions: Limits on grammatical irregularity The first two chapters have discussed several English verbal inflections. Two are fully regular, namely Present Tense Agreement –s and the Present Participle –ing (chapter 1), and two have large numbers of lexical exceptions, on the order of hundreds, namely the Finite Past Tense –ed and the Past Participle –en (chapter 2). While the second chapter argued that the latter two are allomorphs of a single abstract morpheme, the main interest in this chapter is the fact that these allomorphs both have many and different exceptional lexical forms, in sharp contrast to the regularity of the suffixes –s and –ing. Some examples of exceptional forms include: (3-1) fought/ fought, quit/ quit, slept/ slept (no change between forms) ate/ eaten, drove/ driven (internal vowel change, –en ending) drank/ drunk, rang/ rung (internal vowel changes) The main issue in this chapter is to understand why several verbal inflections, and some related constructs such as English contractions, must be fully regular, while others such as past tense allomorphs and plural nouns so easily tolerate hundreds of lexical exceptions. This discrepancy is robustly attested in today’s synchronic grammars. Previous generative and traditional accounts have simply not formulated or otherwise addressed this question.

3.1 What is a “regular form”? Before we analyze this general contrast (between full regularity and an abundance of irregular forms), we need to scrutinize the concept of “fully regular”. We can define this term as follows: (3-2) Fully Regular Properties. A lexical category is fully regular for some property if the property holds of all its open class members. We can contrast fully regular properties of some lexical entries with some that are not: – Number Agreement verbal forms are fully regular in English; the only phonologically exceptional forms, does, says and has, can be independently argued to not be members of the open class of verbs; rather they are in the closed class of (about 20) “Grammatical Verbs” (see section 6.6). https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110734379-004

3.1 What is a “regular form”? 

–

 81

Similarly, the phonetic alliteration of all Present and Past Tense forms of English is fully regular, since the only exception, go/ went, is also a Grammatical Verb.1

The exact nature of the closed class of “Grammatical Verbs” and why they sometimes don’t conform to the regularities of open class verbs is the subject matter of chapter 6, and so not further discussed in this chapter.

3.1.1 Distributional limits on irregular inflections Let us first distinguish two kinds of inflections on the productive lexical category hosts N, V and A.2 If we survey a range of English inflections and for comparison French and Czech, we see that some allow irregularity while others are fully regular, including some observed in earlier chapters among English verbal inflections. (Similar contrasts in other languages are mentioned below.) English examples of both types are listed in the first two rows of Table (3-3). The table also includes examples from other languages, which will not be examined in detail: (3-3) Regular vs. Irregular Inflections in English, Czech and French FULLY REGULAR

MANY IRREGULAR STEMS

present participles/ gerunds

finite past tenses (hosts in either V or I)

person and number agreements on V (no exceptions among open class verbs) 3. possessives on Ns and NPs (English . . .’s) 4. number, gender agreements on A (Czech) 5. case inflections on N and A (Czech)

past participle stems in English and French; perfective aspect prefixes in Czech plural forms of English nouns

1. 2.

comparative adjective stems (esp. Czech) passive participle stems (English, French)

1 Recall from chapter 1 that finite copulas are not even in the category V, so they are not expected to exhibit regular number agreement or alliterating past forms. 2 It is unclear whether we want to say that languages allow the lexical category P to tolerate irregular inflections. Is French au ‘to the’ an irregular inflection? There are languages in which Ps host inflections for object pronouns, but I don’t know whether these inflections are always regular.

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For row 3 in the Table, notice that there are no irregular possessives on English nouns; irregular possessives (my, their, our, *that’s, *all’s, *few’s) always concern closed class pronouns. On the other hand, there are dozens of irregular plural inflections on open class nouns, because plurals realize a numeral and/ or quantifier functional category modifier inside an NP, as permitted by Local Fusion (chapter 2). This principle and examples of many irregular fused noun plurals are repeated here for convenience. (3-4) Local Fusion. Open class lexical heads can fuse only with functional categories in their own maximal projections and not with those in other maximal projections. (3-5) Irregular plurals. kin, offspring, quid, sperm, men, women, children, oxen, feet, geese, lice, mice, teeth, grouse, sheep, deer, moose, bass, pike, perch, salmon, trout, knives, leaves, loaves, Swiss, -ese (Chinese, Maltese, Senegalese, Viennese) It can be useful here to consider the scope of the distinction between the two types of inflections in the above Table, as they are often conflated in tradition-based discussions of an undifferentiated concept of “inflection”. The irregularities in column 2 always exemplify the “Blocking Principle” of Aronoff (1976): if irregular forms are available, they necessarily supersede regular ones. Even in structures where inflected open class lexical heads can be irregular, they are in the majority of cases regular. For instance, although English includes the irregular think/ thought, ox/ oxen, far/ farthest, these pairs don’t represent general patterns. Similar-sounding stems are regular: blink/ blinked. fox/ foxes, fair/ fairest. That is, most lexical heads are inflected with “default” suffixes. In such cases, these regular inflections are alternative realizations on the lexical head of a functional modifier, or equivalently these functional categories are in “dissociated positions” on the head (Embick and Noyer 2001). This means that for an irregular inflection, some influence besides the possibility of AR (repeated here from section 1.4) must come into play. AR is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for irregularity: (3-6) Alternative Realization/ Dissociation (AR). A syntactic feature of a category can be spelled out outside its canonical position by a closed class item under another categoy, provided some projections of the two categories are adjacent sisters.3 3 For a wide range of justifications of AR, see Emonds (2000: ch. 4). The “Merger” of Halle and Marantz (1993) is formally just a subcase of AR. Additionally, a “projection” of a category should

3.1 What is a “regular form”? 

 83

As in other cases, the AR positions on a lexical head differ from the canonical positions of these features in Logical Form. The overriding advantage of AR is that a single locality principle determines the possible structural distance between the dissociated and canonical positions of both fully regular and default inflections, by requiring that some projections of each position be sisters. Subsequent sections and chapters will show that this same principle also accounts for the positions of the bound morphemes traditionally called contractions (for instance, they’re, I’m, she’s). And although English does not have regular case inflections on nouns, such inflections in languages that do have them typically alternatively realize the canonical features of several Ps as case features. An extensive analysis of this type of system (in Estonian) is given in den Dikken and Dekany (2019). Overall, AR appears to be the most general way to formally express the locality of bound inflections.

3.1.2 Local vs. regular inflections Potentially irregular inflectional forms combine lexical heads with functional category features whose canonical positions are within the same extended projection. The usual Extended Projection (“EP”) of V is IP, while that of N is DP (cf. Grimshaw 1990). For A and P, their maximal projections and their extended projections are the same, AP, PP respectively.4 To identify and characterize the relatively closer canonical sources of irregular inflections to their lexical head host, I introduce a concept of structural relatedness: (3-7) Neighborhoods. The neighborhood of an item X is everything dominated by any of X’s projections but by no YP inside this neighborhood, where Y ≠ X. The possibly irregular inflections such as those in the right column of (3-3) can now be characterized as those whose canonical and alternatively realized positions satisfy a stringent locality condition: (3-8) Local Inflections on a categorial host are alternative realizations of some feature whose canonical position is in the host’s neighborhood.

also include any phrase immediately dominating its maximal projection if that phrase’s head is empty or otherwise “not interpreted”. 4 The definition of Extended Projection for bare XP will be modified in chapter 4, but the structural size of neighborhoods as defined in (3-7) will not be affected.

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(3-9)

Irregular Spell Outs. On open class hosts, only local inflections can be irregular. That is, non-local inflections must be fully regular, as in (3-2).

Irregular inflections can be phonologically realized in diverse but still limited ways. Cross-linguistic variety can obscure the basic phonological form of a lexical head. (3-10) English Phonological Opacity. Local Inflections in English can be spelled out by an alternative alliterating stem (sell/ sol-d), a non-productive suffix (grew/ grow-n), or both (break/ brok-en). In synchronic terms, there is no way to predict the exact forms of irregular inflections, but the outer limits imposed by (3-10) are strict. In accord with (3-8), some local inflections are as follows; several though not all are often irregular in English: – Verb inflections realize functional modifiers of V: MOOD (=I), TENSE, ASPECT. – Noun inflections realize plural functional categories modifying N in D, Q, NUM. – Adjective inflections realize functional categories modifying A (grading). A list of some 30 irregular English plural nouns appears in (3-5) above. A partial but representative list of English irregular finite Pasts (+Realis, +Past) was given as (2-1) in section 2.1, repeated here: ate, broke, drank, drove, flew, gave, grew, rang, saw, spoke, swam, took, went and wrote. A similar list of non-finite Past Participles appeared as (2-2) in the same section: eaten, broken, drunk, driven, flown, given, grown, rung, seen, spoken, swum, taken, gone and written. As remarked there, there are about 200 irregular English Pasts, about half of which have distinct irregular finite and non-finite Past forms. Though only a few open class English adjectives have irregular comparatives (farther, further, elder), in some other languages these are more common.5 The next tree (3-11) exemplifies a variety of positions where inflections on open class hosts (here V) (i) must be fully regular (because they are not local) or (ii) can be irregular and hence phonologically opaque. This tree schematizes sources of inflections on a main and auxiliary verb in a clause. The positions marked *** are those outside IP (the Extended Projection of the two higher Vs) or inside some other XP contained in this IP. Any category in these positions is 5 For instance, Czech has many irregularly graded adjectives; a few examples are: malý/ menší ‘small(er)’, dlouhý/ další ‘long(er)’, vysoký/ vyšší ‘tall(er)’ (P. Caha, personal communication). There are also numerous Czech verbs with non-productive aspectual prefixes expressing perfect aspect, as Table (3-3) indicates.

3.1 What is a “regular form”? 

 85

not in the “neighborhood” (3-7) of either V, so any AR of such a category under V must be fully regular. For instance, any agreement on a V canonically originating within a DP (Gender, Number, or Person, or “φ-features”) is correctly predicted to be regular. Similarly, though this volume does not treat such cases, there are languages such as Hungarian whose embedded IP clauses contain case features assigned from outside IP, and these inflections must also be fully regular. To illustrate some variety, the tree (3-11) has a passive predicate with two distinct interpretations, to be analyzed in detail in chapter 6. In (3-11a) the modifier of the passive participle taken is a Grading or Degree Adverb making the passive phrase “adjectival” while in (3-11b) the modifier is a Temporal Adverb making it “verbal”. The empty DP sister of the participle in object position is co-indexed with the DP in the subject position. Features in the positions marked *** cannot lead to Local Inflections on any of the Vs. The underlined nodes are positions of either irregular or default local inflections on the V head of the Extended Projections (EP, in bold). The IP is the EP of must, have, seem, be and –ed, while the AP is the EP of take and –en. (3-11)

a. The guest must have seemed quite taken with our neighbor’s house. b. The guest must have been already taken to our neighbor’s house.6 [ YP *** DP φ

IP

*** ] VP

I , +Irrealis

VP

V,+Past 6

***

AP φ

V, +Past must

have

V

+Past

SPEC

AP

seem/ be ed ±Deg/ ±Temp quite/already V

DP φ PP

Aφ Aφ

*** ***

take en

6 In accord with the analysis of chapter 2, the higher Past in the tree is in this feature’s canonical position, while the lower Past is its Alternative Realization. The verb have is a minimal stative VØ that selects a bare VP sister that is +Past.

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 3 Regular inflections and contractions: Limits on grammatical irregularity

3.1.3 More regular and irregular inflections in Czech and French We will now see some example inflections for the last two rows of Table (3-3). The left column of rows 4 and 5 states that for example, Czech case inflections on open class Nouns and feature agreements on adjectives (in Number, Gender and Case) are always regular.7 Similarly, the standard agreements in φ-features on Czech Adjectives include no exceptional inflections on open class items. For examples of an irregular inflection on the category A, we can consider grading on Czech adjectives. In a thorough analysis of this language’s adjectives, Caha, de Clercq and Vanden Wynngaerd (2019) argue that its AP projections typically contain several functional heads above the lexical A. Their analysis indicates that there are perhaps 100 irregular (non-productive) Czech adjectival roots that spell out from one to four of these functional head modifiers combined with an A root. This number of irregular roots is thus comparable to the number of irregular past verbs in English. It is instructive to note that all these irregularly compared adjectives nonetheless exhibit completely regular case and agreement suffixes for all cases. This contrast underscores a central idea in this chapter, that the possible irregularity of an inflection on an open class head depends on which category it alternatively realizes, and not on any inherent property of the head itself. Another instance of irregular inflection in both English and French is the range of Passive Participle roots, as indicated in row 5 of the right column in Table (3-3).8 A sample of these forms is listed in (2-2) of section 2.1. We will see in chapter 6 that Passive Participle suffixes in English and similarly structured languages are word-internal Adjectival heads, which then project to APs, as shown in tree (3-12). The Extended Projection of –en, that is, the neighborhood of the passive participle, is then AP itself. The passive inflection alternatively realizes the head category D of the direct object as an inflection on V. Since this D is interpreted in this neighborhood (via its status as V’s direct object), the passive inflection (but not the features it dominates) is local and so can be irregular in English, as well as in French.9 7 While there are some nouns that are irregular in the nominative, this seems not so much irregular case as it is truncation. 8 In English, passive participles always have the same form as the active perfect participles. There are a few lexical passive adjectives in English whose historical sources are older passive participles: clean shaven, learn-ed, burnt. These no longer function in productive paradigms. 9 French also has numerous irregular Past Participles, used both in active forms, the so-called passé composé, and in passive forms. For example, the default past participle suffix of verbs whose infinitive ends in –ir is –i, yielding regular pairs such as fournir/ fourni ‘furnish’, fuir/ fui ‘flee’, rire/ ri ‘laugh’, pourrir/ pourri ‘rot’, etc. But at the same time, we find many irregular past

3.2 Semantic opacity in local inflections 

(3-12)

 87

AP AP

SPEC, ±Grading A,+D V tak-, brok-, driv-

DP A,+D *** -en

If passive participles are always As, one might ask why they cannot always be graded. Emonds (2006) demonstrates that the difference between two interpretations of the structure (3-12) turns on whether the head [A –en] is inserted in syntax and hence present in LF (yielding adjectival passives), or instead is visible only after late insertion at PF (in verbal passives). When A is available in LF, at least some Specifiers of A can be interpreted as in (3-13a-b). (3-13)

a. The traffic noise was/ seemed/ sounded/ remained so low/ too invasive. b. The traffic noise was/ seemed/ sounded/ remained so muted/ too amplified. c. The traffic noise was being/ got (*so) reduced/ (*too) amplified.

However in (3-13c), late insertion in a derivation, or alternatively the Cancellation Feature AØ, makes the category A unavailable for interpretation, so that grading modifiers that go with A are unavailable.

3.2 Semantic opacity in local inflections Local inflections can be “semantically irregular”, as well as phonologically irregular. Non-compositional semantics are allowed on inflected verbs only if they alternatively realize features from their own neighborhood. Zwicky and Pullum (1983) refer to these as “semantic idiosyncrasies” of certain inflectional forms; I will use the term “Semantic Opacity” for such inflections. (3-14) Semantic Opacity. Only local inflection-host pairs can have special semantics not based on the regular syntax of the lexical category host.

participles, the second form in each pair, among French open class verbs: courir/ couru ‘run’, cuire/ cuit ‘cook’, lire/ lu ‘read’, mouirr/ mort ‘die’, ouvrir/ ouvert ‘open’. Other irregular pairs include asseoir/ assis ‘sit’, écrire/ écrit ‘write’, paraître/ paru ‘appear’, savoir/ su ‘know’, vivre/ vécu ‘live’.

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Here are some examples of this Semantic Opacity: – Some languages have classes of Vs with only passive forms and lacking corresponding actives, called “deponent verbs”, for example, be born, which has the paradigms of an activity verb. – A number of plural nouns can mean more or something different than just the singular made multiple. Some examples are: brethren, betters, drawers, elders, glasses, hives (skin illness), (bad) manners, respects, spectacles. – The same holds for certain comparative and superlative Adjectives. They mean something different than the adjective’s simple positive degree. (3-15)

The lower floors are more popular. ≠The low floors are more popular. At our wedding, Bill was the best man. Which of those is the lesser evil?

Outside of English, it is not difficult to find an abundance of examples. Most famously, Latin has a significant class of deponent verbs: moriturus ‘about to die’, sequitur ‘follows’. In Czech, verbal prefixes that usually express perfective aspect (completed or snapshot action) frequently create semantically opaque combinations with roots (L. Veselovská, pers. comm.). In Proto-Germanic, the ‘preterit present’ ancestors of today’s modals were past tenses that took on idiosyncratic meanings divorced from simple pasts of their roots; thus the modal can derives from an ancient irregular past tense of know. The syntactic independence of a local inflection can be lost not only at the phonological interface (PF), but also at the interpretive/ semantic interface (LF). I treat this as two parallel variants of Opacity: (3-16) Generalized Fusion. An alternatively realized feature F can exhibit irregular LF or PF Fusion with a lexical category host only if F originates in the host’s neighborhood.10 Many linguists are aware of the division made by Zwicky and Pullum between inflections, which can exemplify fusion, and bound clitics (see section 3.3.2 below), which cannot. In large part, their distinction seems to be on the right track. More accurately however, the Zwicky-Pullum line between inflections and clitics reflects the division between local and regular inflections, since non-local inflections never

10 In the tree (3-11), the category D of an object is not dominated by DP, but rather is part of it. Consequently, this can give rise to a local (irregular) inflection on V. However the φ-features in DP are internal to DP, and so, if spelled out on V, are not local inflections and must be regular.

3.3 Contractions and clitics are fully regular inflections 

 89

exhibit any type of Fusion. French clitics, as we will see in section 3.3.2, are simply further examples of regular (non-local) inflections.11 (3-17)

Properties of local inflections (modifying Zwicky and Pullum 1983): a. Host Category. Inflections have a specific lexical category host: N, V, or A. b. Phonological Fusion. Host allomorphs can be irregular; that is, inflections can fuse with a host in single morphemes, for example, in noun plurals and verbal pasts.12 c. Semantic Fusion. Host-inflection combinations can be semantically opaque.

3.3 Contractions and clitics are fully regular inflections Let’s stand back a moment and situate the notion of inflection in general terms. (3-18) General Properties of Inflections a. Inflections are bound morphemes that realize syntactic features in given syntactic contexts, probably never more than two marked features. For more on their syntactic nature, see especially Anderson (1982). b. Inflections on open class categorial hosts are productive. Even if an inflection exhibits pervasive irregularity, it has a default/ elsewhere form. The reader can confirm that these properties (being bound morphemes, syntactic in character, and productive) hold for all inflections so far considered in this volume, for example, those in Table (3-3).

3.3.1 English contractions As useful as this venerable and familiar term “inflection” is, the fact is that certain types of bound morphemes that satisfy (3-18a-b) have traditionally not been considered to be inflections. One such class is what English grammars refer to as 11 The possibility of Semantic Fusion does not involve a hard and fast line. Certain idiomatic uses of Romance verbal clitics consist of semantically opaque combinations, but less frequently than do local inflections: French: se la couler douce ‘take it easy’, s’en ficher ‘not give a darn’. 12 For fuller discussion of Phonological Fusion, see Embick and Marantz (2008).

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 3 Regular inflections and contractions: Limits on grammatical irregularity

“contractions”, written with apostrophes. The free morphemes often paired with contracted forms are given in parentheses: (3-19) n’t (not), ’m (am), ’re (are), ’ll (will), ’s (is/ has), ’ve (have), ’d (had, would) These contractions are all based on elements in the I position, whose hosts are the DP subjects of I, or less frequently inverted WH-forms.13 A lay person’s view of English contractions may assume them to be transparently optional phonological reductions of the paired longer forms, but this simplification is inaccurate. There are recognized syntactic limitations on their use in contexts where the longer forms are grammatical. Consider for example the underlined free morphemes in (3-20a) and (3-21a) and their contracted counterparts in the (b) examples. (3-20) a. Sam would [VP be [PP in the office]] more than that guy has [VP been]] b. Sam would [VP be [PP in the office]] more than that guy’s [VP been]. (3-21)

a. Jim is [PP in New York] [PP due to his job] this week. b. Jim’s [PP in New York] [PP due to his job] this week.

The bracketed PPs and VPs in these examples can be null, due either to phrasal ellipses (marked with e) in connected discourse in (3-22a) or to phrasal movements leaving traces t in (3-22b): (3-22) a.

Sam would [VP be [PP in the office]] more than that guy has ([VP e]). Sam would [VP be [PP in the office]] more than that guy has [VP been [PP e]]. b. Do you know where Jim is [PP t] [PP due to his job] this week? Do you know why Jim is [PP in New York] [PP t] this week?

If these contractions were simply optional phonological shortenings of the I constituent, they should be uniformly allowed in all the examples of (3-22). But there is a well-known syntactic limitation (3-23) on their appearance (King 1970). As a result of this syntactic condition, some contractions are allowed while others are ungrammatical.

13 When have is used as a main verb (V), it cannot contract (Emonds 1976: ch. VI): *They’ve to leave soon; *he’s a friend cook his meals; *their boy’d a nap after lunch (vs. They have to leave soon; he has a friend cook his meals; their boy had a nap after lunch).

3.3 Contractions and clitics are fully regular inflections 

(3-23) a. b. c. d.

 91

Sam would [VP be [PP in the office]] more than that guy’s [VP been [PP e]]. *Sam would [VP be [PP in the office]] more than that guy’s ([VP e]). Do you know why Jim’s [PP in New York] [PP t] this week? *Do you know where Jim’s [PP t] [PP due to his job] this week?

This restriction, widely called “King’s Generalization”, states that a contracted I is not allowed when it is adjacent to a following empty phrase, which holds in (only) (3-23b) and (3-23d). This kind of structure-based condition shows that English contractions are an instance of syntactic inflections that are defined by the properties in (3-18a-b). They are bound morphemes that realize syntactic features in given syntactic contexts. To the extent that they have productive syntactic hosts (such as third-person subject DPs of any form), contractions are also productive. Moreover, since the contractions realize features whose canonical positions are outside the neighborhood (3-7) of their nominal host, they are not local inflections, and so must be fully regular, by (3-8). As empirical confirmation, there is no set of host DPs where the usual contractions are replaced by irregular forms. We can conclude that English contractions should be analyzed as a subset of regular inflections. They are therefore an integral part of English verbal morphosyntax. As far as theoretical analysis goes, the matter of contractions can rest here. One might wonder, however, why the multitudinous studies of English inflections don’t include them. In my view, the basis for this oversight stems from an atheoretical conception of inflection, applied to a rather straightforward empirical observation about contractions: (3-24) Paired Bound and Free Forms. Analysts of English observe that each bound contracted morpheme is paired with a free morpheme with the same syntactic features, similar phonology, and similar distribution. These familiar pairs are those given above in (3-19). These analysts realize that in contrast, bound morphemes classed as inflections in both traditional and more formal studies cannot be readily paired in this way. (That is, –ing or third singular agreement –s are not alternative spell outs of specific free morphemes, nor do any free morphemes correspond to the nominal plural or possessive –s inflections.) Rather, inflections are taken to be somehow more abstract, requiring some special and more abstract concept of grammar or linguistics, whereas contractions are felt to be simply a matter of common sense or spelling, involving no specialist knowledge. Accepting this perspective, linguists have created a sort of pseudo-problem. That is, given the similarities of contractions and traditionally classified inflec-

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tions, for example in terms of (3-18), why do inflections sometimes exhibit properties such as Phonological (3-10) and Semantic Opacity (3-14), while contractions do not? In the terms developed in this chapter, this is a non-issue, since the inflections are defined in a way that includes contractions. As a result, the traditional division between inflections and contractions, usually inexplicit, has no linguistic significance. The class of productive syntactic bound morphemes, including English contractions, forms a group by being instances of Alternative Realization. All these are rightly named inflections. It is then a secondary division within this group, between non-local, necessarily regular inflections, and local inflections, which often exhibits extensive irregularity across languages. Due to being non-local, English contractions are simply a subset of fully regular inflections, and beyond this, very little more need be said.

3.3.2 French verbal clitics Another type of syntactically defined bound morpheme, intensively scrutinized in generative studies, is the “clitic pronouns” (and adverbs) of Romance languages. This phenomenon, absent in English, nonetheless underscores the cross-linguistic relevance of dividing inflections into regular and possibly irregular subtypes. Numerous proposals for the grammar of French clitics, including several from Kayne (1975), are brought together into a single system in Emonds (2017a), and this is the basis of this section. With respect to issues relevant to this chapter, the French system is representative of the clitic systems in other Romance languages. Except for two adverbials, French verbal clitics are definite pronouns alternatively realized on a V host. Such clitics, which are underlined in (3-25), can also express basic grammaticalized XPs. In an otherwise strictly head-initial language, the fact that French verbal clitics are almost always prefixes is notable. In these examples, the post-verbal phrasal symbols represent the phonetically empty canonical/ interpretable positions of the clitics, and the brackets indicate the sequences of clitics + V host. (3-25) a.

Marie veut [les leur distribuer] DP DP pendant la réunion. Mary wants them them distribute during the meeting ‘Mary wants to distribute them to them during the meeting.’ b. Anne [s’en disait] DP très fière PP. Anne herself thereof said very proud ‘Anne said herself to be very proud of it.’

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As illustrated in detail for several constructions, Emonds (2017a) argues that the structural distance between these clitics and their canonical positions as arguments (or locational adverbs) is accurately and fully described by Alternative Realization (1-34), even in constructions such as Romance causatives, where this broad claim seems prima facie too strong, and in fact has been presupposed to be incorrect in most generative treatments. At first glance, these French clitics seem very different from the English contractions analyzed in the previous section. The clitic host is V, while the host for contractions is the subject DP; and the categories alternatively realized by French clitics are D and P, while contractions alternatively realize the finite copulas (the features Realis IØ and Stative VØ). On the other hand, both types of constructions are theoretically very similar. Both involve bound morphemes that are productive and syntactic (they realize one or two marked features). Finally, both types of bound morphemes are non-local. That is, the canonical positions of these features are not in the Extended Projections of their hosts. The neighborhood (3-7) of a contracted I is the subject DP, while I’s canonical position is outside this DP. This position is too high to be in a local relation with the contracted forms. Analogously, the neighborhood of the V host of a French clitic is IP, but the canonical positions of the clitic’s features (DEF, PLUR, PERSON, GOAL, etc.) are in lower DPs or PPs, too low to be in a local relation with the clitic. So again the interpreted positions of both types of bound morphemes are not in the hosts’ neighborhoods. From these considerations, we see that French clitics (more generally Romance clitics), like English contractions, are not Local Inflections (3-8). As a result, by (3-9), neither English contractions nor French clitics can be irregular, nor can they fuse with their hosts. Rather, French clitics are, as some syntacticians have suspected, a straightforward case of regular inflections, and fall under the general structural condition that restricts (and unites) all inflections, namely Alternative Realization/ Dissociation. As a concluding point, the same question arises here as in the previous section on English contractions. If Romance clitics are simply inflections, why have traditional, structuralist and most generative studies not considered them as falling under this concept?14 I suggest that once again linguists have somehow instinctively limited the term “inflection” (productive syntactic morphemes that conform to AR) to bound morphemes that are not, in any obvious way, related to free mor-

14 A notable exception is Roberge (1990), who argues in particular that French subject clitics are agreement inflections.

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phemes that express the same features.15 To make the point, I reproduce (3-24), changing only the reference to the language. (3-26) Paired Bound and Free Forms. Analysts of Romance languages observe that each bound pronominal clitic morpheme can be paired with a free morpheme with the same syntactic features, similar phonology, and similar distribution. Given the relative transparency of the pairing of clitics with “strong” (i.e. normal) pronouns, the Romance linguistics tradition, which values the diachronic pedigree of descent from Latin, has set aside the possibility that its medieval and modern verbal clitics are similar in nature to what are universally termed inflection in the Classical Languages (agreement, tense and aspect). These latter aspects of the modern languages are readily called inflection, while the clitics, unknown in Latin, are rather pointlessly excluded from treatment under this rubric.

3.3.3 Structurally prohibited irregular fusions Detailed inspection of the earlier tree (3-11) can help illustrate why the inflections of agreement and case in the left column of Table (3-5) must be regular. For example, there can be no irregular Feminine adjectives or second-person open class verbs, because such inflections alternatively realize Gender and Person features which originate (that is, are interpreted) inside DPs, which are never the Extended Projections of inflected As or Vs. For this reason, agreement inflections on open class lexical category hosts are generally always regular. To my knowledge, competing descriptive frameworks have not captured or even discussed this generalization.16 The neighborhoods of case suffixes are the DPs projected by the D, Q and N heads of this DP marked for Case, that is, the DPs in which they appear. These features alternatively realize the canonically interpreted Case assigners, I, V, N and P (Emonds 2000; Pesetsky and Torrego 2007), whose positions are all outside the DP in which the inflections appear. As a result, Case inflections on an open class 15 Latin grammars such as Henle (1945) discuss the adjectival inflections –issimus ‘superlative’ and –iter ‘adverbial –ly’, without mentioning the rather obvious free morpheme sources of these suffixes: summus ‘high’ and iter ‘way’. Thus, fort-issimus ‘strongest/ top strong’ and celer-iter ‘quickly/ quick way’. 16 Syntactically, English adjectives like handsome and pretty are compatible with both ±FEM. Their “gender agreement” is purely pragmatic and unrelated to the present discussion.

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host (that is, on Nouns rather than Pronouns or Determiners) are again necessarily regular. The following Table summarizes the structural factor that this chapter has found to be crucial for predicting when an inflection must be regular. Recall that an irregular inflection must realize a feature which is necessarily dominated by the Extended Projection of its open class lexical head, and not by any lower Extended Projection. Therefore, a regular inflection has to originate in a different, higher or lower, phrase. (3-27) Neighborhoods of regular inflections FULLY REGULAR inflections spelling out some feature F

NEIGHBORHOOD  = a projection XP of the surface position of F

Higher or lower YP (≠XP) containing canonical positions of Fs

The -ing of gerunds/ participles

VP

NP or AP (higher)

person, number agreement

IP or VP

DP (lower)

possessive ’s on Ns and NPs DP

Higher DP (or no AR)

case suffixes on N or A

DP or AP

IP, VP, PP, or higher DP

number, gender agreement on A

AP

DP or NP (higher)

contracted auxiliaries on DPs DP

IP (higher)

I conclude this section with a comment on a minimal contrast between regular (non-local) and irregular inflections, when both alternatively realize direct object features on their main verb sister. The possibly irregular passive inflection –ed/ –en spells out the phrasal (D) feature of this object, but not any features from inside the object DP. This inflection is thus local with respect to the V, and consequently it can be and, as seen in section 3.1.2, often is irregular in English and French. In other words, the participial morpheme itself realizes only the main categorial feature of the object. Since this DP position is within the verb’s Extended Projection and interpreted there, nothing prevents its alternatively realized spell out on V from being irregular. On the other hand, an accusative clitic pronoun in Romance or an additional Gender/ Number agreement suffix on the passive participle (as for example, in French and Czech, although not in English) spells out features that are interpreted interior to the object DP. The canonical positions of these features are thus not in the Extended Projection of V. Clitics alternatively realize not only the famil-

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iar agreeing features but also features like ±DEF and ±REFLEXIVE, which are also interpreted in phrases properly contained in the participial AP – which is their Extended Projection; see again the trees (3-11) and (3-12). Precisely because these features of object clitics and of passive participle agreement are canonically positioned outside the EP of the passivized verb, they are not local and so must be (and are) fully regular.

3.4 A further restriction on irregular local inflection From what has gone before in this chapter, nothing prevents any open class lexical head in English from having an irregular local inflection. Yet there must be some systematic reason for why longer nouns like those in (3-28) and more complex verbs like those in (3-29) never have irregular plurals or past forms.17 (3-28) acorn, anecdote, antelope, banjo, banister, basement, cartoon, caravan, carriage, catastrophe, caterpillar, cigar, dandelion, dilettante, event, exchange, genocide, giraffe, hollyhock, husband, hybrid, jaguar, migraine, muskrat, parade, romance, shampoo, suggest, sycamore, tornado, trespass, tulip, violin (3-29) ascertain, baptize, barbecue, camouflage, careen, confuse, contact, curtail, determine, donate, emerge, frustrate, grandstand, highlight, imagine, maintain, manoeuvre, pretend, recommend, reconcile, sauté, suffice, suspend, vanquish For the open class of adjectives, some factor of length in English similarly seems to restrict synthetic grading on many of them, such as those in (3-30). Many bisyllabic and all trisyllabic English adjectives are incompatible with the comparative and superlative suffixes –er and –est, as the reader can verify for the following list. (3-30) absolute, astute, awkward, beautiful, benign, blatant, candid, compact, decent, direct, famous, feline, fragrant, gallant, intense, latent, morose, obese, overt, perfect, perverse, precise, prevalent, prudent, robust, silent, senile, turbulent A general prohibition on irregular plurals of N, irregular pasts of V, and synthetic comparatives for A thus seems to affect in English the vast majority of multisyl17 I put aside the rather conscious artificial use of Latin and Greek plurals like antennae, bases, cacti, foci, etc.

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labic stems. In particular, stems with a second syllable which has any secondary stress or some non-minimal consonantal structure are affected. However, as we will now see, a better way to approach this restriction is to specify not what is excluded but rather what form a stem must have in order to be irregular (or in the case of adjectives, in order to accept synthetic grading with suffixes).

3.5 Dividing the English lexicon: Primary vs. secondary vocabulary The open class vocabulary items of English can be divided into two subclasses that roughly but by no means exactly correspond to their historical sources:18 – a primary Germanic core including those inherited from Old English and Common Scandinavian (= Early Old Norse); – a secondary borrowed vocabulary, taken from French, Latin and Classical Greek, dating from the adoption of English by the ruling Anglo-Norman aristocracy during the fourteenth century and continuing through the Renaissance. This division has an important synchronic role in expressing appropriate descriptive generalizations in all components of English grammar. The more obvious criteria for synchronically dividing the two vocabularies in the English Dictionary are listed in (3-31): (3-31)

Core or Primary Vocabulary a Mundane and more general meanings: eat, drink, swallow, smell, sweat b Restrictive phonology; monosyllables and a few weak second syllables c Possible irregular inflection, e.g. past tenses besides –ed, irregular plurals, etc. d Synthetic grading of adjectives (-er, -est): saner, sourest, stupidest, tighter

Secondary Vocabulary More specific meanings: devour, imbibe, consume, aroma, perspire Phonological richness, such as secondary stress or more complex second syllables Only productive inflections, e.g. –ed past on V, only –s plurals on N, etc. Free morphemes must compare A: *insaner, *dourest, *morbidest, *tauter

18 Much of this section and the next are revisions of sections 3-5 of Emonds (2013b).

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With respect to (3-31a), it is a commonplace in studies of sources of (Early) Modern English vocabulary that words borrowed from Romance and Greek can be near synonyms of words inherited from Germanic, but that the former have more specific or more technical meanings, and very often have more positive connotations. Broadly speaking, the Germanic counterparts in these pairings are also more frequent.

3.5.1 Semantics and morphophonology of the primary vocabulary Whatever the importance of semantics in dividing the lexicon, the central and definitional basis of the above Table is actually the Phonological Criterion (3-31b).19 For a clearer division of vocabularies, this criterion needs to be made more precise. As previous grammatical studies have not attempted to formally divide the open class Lexicon or to derive consequences of this in other components, the attempt here to sharpen the line in (3-31b) will doubtless need to be refined by future research. Since many items in the Primary Vocabulary are not monosyllabic, what is first needed is a tentative notion of an additional possible weak syllable, so as to make a contentful claim about which (non-composite) English vocabulary items may qualify as primary. The discussions that follow suggest that words such as in (3-32), divided as indicated, are indeed in the Primary Vocabulary. (3-32) a-wake, a-llow, be-come, be-gin, di-vide, broth-er, bott-om, bus-y, fin-ish, gent-le, hands-ome, litt-le, oft-en, op-en, prett-y, prom-ise, salm-on, stup-id, wom-an20 These examples serve as a guide for characterizing the form of primary morphemes. (3-33)

Extended English Monosyllables. Single morphemes in English Primary Vocabulary contain: (i) A core syllable of any form conforming to English phonotactics,

19 I do not mean to downplay the importance of the Semantic Criterion of (3-31a), it is just that at this point we lack a clear enough concept of the data needed to formalize it. 20 These divisions do not necessarily correspond to standard dictionary syllabification, which may not be based on phonetic units.

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(ii) possibly a single reduced, unstressed vowel adjacent to the core syllable21 (iii) and adjacent to this vowel, a possible single less marked obstruent, voiced if word-initial. Among the final, unstressed reduced vowels in (ii) are the English word-final syllabic sonorants, typically spelled as -er/ -re, -el/ -le, -en and -om. A second, non-core initial or final syllable can for convenience be called an (English) “weak lexical syllable”.  Weak syllables in this sense include  ǝ-, bǝ-, dǝ-/di-, -id/ -ed, -en/ -on, -ish, -ǝj (spelled -age), -y and -ǝ (spelled -er). The term “less marked” refers to the fact that (i) among English phonetic onsets, the front stops are overall less marked (much more frequent than palatals or velars) and (ii) among English codas, the coronals (t, d, č, ǰ, s, z, š) are less marked than labials, velars or interdentals.22 The relatively simple phonology required of individual morphemes in today’s English Primary Vocabulary (3-31b) is tentatively formulated as in (3-33). Single primary morphemes are thus made up of a core syllable, possibly preceded or followed by a second weak lexical syllable, as just defined.

3.5.2 Irregular forms must be in the primary vocabulary Let us return to this chapter’s main issue, limits on inflectional irregularity in open class items. In general, the Inflection Criterion (c) in the Table (3-31) allows irregularity only in the Primary Vocabulary. Consider for example the productive English inflection most often replaced by irregular forms, namely the past morpheme –ed. English irregular pasts, such as the 211 verbs listed on the site http:// www.usingenglish.com/reference/irregular-verbs, are all Extended Monosyllables, with a few being combined with prepositional prefixes. Hence, by the Phonological Criterion (3-31b), the verbs in (3-34a) are all candidates for the Primary Vocabulary, and hence permissibly have irregular inflections as in (3-31c). The unstressed syllables in the irregular nouns in (3-34b) are also weak in the sense of (3-33), and so they too qualify for being in the Primary Vocabulary. 21 One reduced, unstressed vowel in word-final position in English is tensed and spelled y (cozy, lazy, ready, tummy, hurry), as discussed in some detail in Chomsky and Halle (1968). Another reduced unstressed vowel in final position is spelled –er; this vowel is a schwa in non-rhotic British English and a syllabic r in most American English. 22 Everyday nouns for body parts, which we might expect to be primary vocabulary, furnish anecdotal evidence for the Semantic Criterion in (3-31a). Even those that are polysyllabic still satisfy (3-33): ankle, elbow, finger, knuckle, shoulder. Medical terms derived from Greek and Latin are generally not part of the primary vocabulary, as they fail to satisfy (3-33).

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(3-34) a. Some primary verbs: alight, awake, become, begin, behold b. Some primary nouns: brother, oxen, salmon, woman c. Some primary adjectives: clumsy, elder, gentle, handsome, pretty, stupid Interestingly, the same holds for the bi-syllabic adjectives in (3-34c). The last line of Table (3-31) also predicts that primary adjectives that conform to (3-33) even if polysyllabic, can be synthetically graded. These predictions are all confirmed by the data in (3-35c). (3-35) a.

Irregular polysyllabic primary past verbs: alit, awoke, became, began, beheld b. Irregular polysyllabic primary plural nouns: brethren, salmon, women c. Synthetically graded polysyllabic primary adjectives: clumsier, eldest, gentlest, grumpier, handsomest, prettier, stupidest, etc.

For contrast, if one inspects again the lists of “longer” Nouns, Verbs and Adjectives in (3-28)-(3-30), it is evident that none are the Extended Monosyllables (3-33) required in the Primary Vocabulary. This is why, in principle, none of these lexical items have the irregular morphology discussed in sections 3.1 and 3.2. Any multisyllabic adjectives that are not Extended Monosyllables (3-33), for example, most of those in (3-30) are also in the Secondary Vocabulary. The reader can verify that these examples are limited to analytic grading with more and most. No other explanation for this would seem available, other than purely ad hoc grammatical marking (unlikely with words of such low frequency).23 Nothing stops an irregular lexical stem in the Primary Vocabulary from serving as the head of a compound, thus yielding for example the irregular nouns church mouse/ church mice, grandchild/ grandchildren, offspring/ offspring, postman/ postmen, and the irregular verbs babysit/ babysat, broadcast/ broadcast, foretell/ foretold, foresee/ foresaw, mislead/ misled, outswim/ outswam, overdraw/ overdrew, spoon feed/ spoon fed, undertake/ undertook, etc. (The latter are often included in lists of irregular verbs, even though it is predictable that compounds have the same properties as their heads.) Some composite verbs with semantically opaque prepositional prefixes are also irregular, whether or not they are compounds in exactly the same sense: for-bid/ bade, fore-cast/cast, for-get/ gotten, for-sake/ sook, in-put/

23 To claim that analytically graded adjectives like most dour, less gauche and most lithe are “irregularly inflected monosyllables” would grossly violate the usual pattern whereby morphological irregularity is limited to more frequent, not less frequent, words.

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put, out-do/ did, over-take/ took, under-stand/ stood, up-set/ set, with-draw/ drew, with-hold/ held.24 Though a lexical root with a complex phonological form that is not an Extended Monosyllable must remain in the Secondary Vocabulary, simply turning this around and satisfying (3-33) by no means leads automatically to an item’s being primary. The additional semantic requirement of line (3-31a), namely having more general and less specific meanings (though at present unspecifiable formally), has noticeable effects. The English adjectives in (3-36), even though they are both monosyllabic and gradable (with more, rather, so, very, etc.), may or may not accept synthetic grading, depending on the speaker. One informant, for example, can synthetically grade chic, stale, and vast, while I cannot. Many forms fail to pass this test clearly. At least in the case of some speakers, these forms must be in the Secondary Vocabulary. (Native speakers may want to compare their intuitions here.25) (3-36) blithe, chic, coy, crass, daft, dank, deft, dire, dour, flip, frail, gauche, gross, hip, hoarse, lank, lithe, lush, orange, prim, stale, suave, taut, terse, vast, vile, wan We can here note a one-way implication regarding stress and lexical status. If a morpheme is in the Primary Vocabulary, its stress is initial except for a possible initial lexically weak syllable; Secondary Vocabulary of course escapes this stricture.26 The Phonological Criterion (3-31b) is highly useful to an English language learner, child or adult, because it identifies a huge number of words that are not in the Primary Vocabulary, and hence must be regularly inflected (and analyti24 Incidentally, there are also surprisingly many open class bound morphemes in compounds (Emonds 2013a): aero-space,, astro-naut, chock-full, , isogloss, jaywalk, juxtapose, lukewarm, pig sty, raspberry telephone, etc. Among these are mis- and re- in compound verbs whose heads can be irregular: mislead, misread, misunderstand and redo, reimburse, resell. 25 The list (3-36) disconfirms the oft repeated claim that English monosyllabic adjectives all accept synthetic grading. 26 After the first Germanic stress shift, the stress in all English words was initial, except that in Old English it never fell on a set of what grammarians have called “inseparable prefixes” (be-, for-, ge-, etc.). This treatment using a list of unstressed initial syllables may well be correct for Old English. But due to the massive influx of common French words in Middle English, including those with initial syllables such as a-, de- and re-, a phonological characterization of possible unstressed initial syllables is more accurate for the Modern English Primary Vocabulary. However, current and general Modern English stress, covering the huge Secondary Vocabulary largely borrowed from Romance, follows Chomsky and Halle’s (1968) “Main stress rule”, sometimes also referred to as the “Romance stress rule”.

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cally graded). Because of it, any multisyllabic morphemes with some secondary stress, like most examples in (3-28)-(3-30), must be in the Secondary Vocabulary. Notice also that all these words have quite specific and not general meanings, in accord with the Semantic Criterion (3-31a). The fact that most such words are inherited from Romance or Greek is synchronically incidental. For the native speaker, the distinct grammatical and phonological behavior of the two vocabularies in Table (3-31), rather than historical provenance, determines which part of the Lexicon a morpheme belongs to. Morphemes can thus end up in a lexical component that differs from what one expects from their diachronic source. For example, the morphosyntax of the Romancederived adjectives long and large (synthetic grading) and verbs move, offer, promise and turn (double DP objects) show that they are in the Primary Vocabulary.27 Although a division in open class vocabulary between primary and secondary has now been established, two pertinent questions still need to be addressed: (3-37) (i)

How is the division between Primary and Secondary Vocabulary related to Universal Grammar? (ii) Does such a division have effects in productive English syntax?

The first question is easily dealt with, by reflecting more on the properties in Table (3-31). Logically, either all languages distinguish Primary and Secondary Vocabularies, or they do not. But even if they do, at least some properties of this division in English, (3-31b, d), are transparently not part of UG.28 So the answer to (3-37i) is that UG provides a potential for such a division, but it does not specify how the division is to be morpho-phonologically executed.

3.6 The syntax of the primary vocabulary: “Phrasal verbs” We now turn to the second question (3-37ii), which is more complex. This section will demonstrate that Primary or Secondary Vocabulary membership indeed

27 In the other direction, verbs such as gainsay and highlight, though composed of Germanic roots, can show signs of now being in the Secondary Vocabulary (by their use of regular morphology, grandstanded/ *grandstood, highlighted/ *highlit). 28 As a simple example, if UG determines that French also has two such vocabularies, they differ neither in stress (all French words have final-syllable stress) nor in the grading of adjectives (all French adjectives are graded analytically). So the properties (3-31b) and (3-31d) distinguishing the two English vocabularies are specific to its particular grammar GE and not to UG.

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plays a role in the productive language-particular syntax of English. A highly relevant area for investigating this issue is what is often called “phrasal verbs”. Hundreds of English verbs combine with preposition-like particles: break off, carry out, cut down, hold back, put up, rub in, turn on, etc. Depending on the verb, the particles can express locational direction of an action (3-38a) and/or combine idiomatically with the verb (3-38b). (For the discussion following, note that the verbs receive less stress than the particles.) (3-38) a.

She broke off the handle. They brought down the water to us. They should carry out their old furniture. A soldier put up the flag on the balcony. The nurse rubbed in the lotion. b. She broke off our relationship. They brought down the government for us. They should carry out their clever plan. A neighbor put up my friend in his guestroom. The nurse rubbed in the insult.

The comprehensive study of phrasal verbs in Fraser (1976) exemplifies several relevant patterns in detail and proposes descriptive generalizations for some of them.29 One often reproduced analysis of phrasal verbs, literal or idiomatic, is that the V + P combinations combine to form a sort of composite verb: [V V + P] (cf. Tallerman 2011). Such an analysis suggests that this structure, so characteristic of English, is a morphologically complex verb. However, it’s easy to demonstrate that “phrasal verbs” are not a structural unit. Compare them for example with the composite and inflectable nouns in (3-39), which correspond to the phrasal verbs break in, buy out, give away, hold up, rub down, and stand in. These compound nouns are easily inflected. (3-39) two break ins, more buy outs, many give aways, hold ups, rub downs, stand ins If the two elements of corresponding phrasal verbs formed a composite V, these verbal counterparts would immediately lead to three robustly false predictions:

29 One often unnoticed pattern is that stative verbs cannot combine with particles: *hate off, *lack on, *like away,*owe in, *need out, *want up, etc. Collocations like have NDP in are activity verbs and so allow progressive tenses: He was having us in for lunch.

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(3-40)

a.

Past tense suffixes should follow the composite form, like the analogous plural suffix on composite nouns, but they do not. *break offed, *buy outed, *give awayed, *hold upped, *rub downed, *stand ined. b. Because phrasal verbs would be endocentric compounds in V positions, their left hand heads would violate Selkirk’s (1982) Right Hand Head Rule for English compounds (see also Lieber 1980). c. In English compound verbs, the left hand member V should bear the main stress (chain smoke, baby sit, breast feed), but as noted regarding (3-38), the non-contrastive stress of phrasal verbs is always on the particle, following the V.

These obvious points clearly indicate that in the proper structure for phrasal verbs, the prepositional particle is a sister (not a daughter) of the head V (see Emonds 1972). That study shows that the grammatical category and behavior of these post-verbal particles is that of an intransitive P complement. For example, when these particles have a literal locational sense, they alternate with full directional PPs, which can contain Specifiers and Complements:30 (3-41)

She broke the handle [PP right off/ right into pieces]. They brought the water [PP down/ right down to the basement]. A soldier held the flag[PP up/ over the railing]. They should move that old furniture [PP out/ two meters out into the yard]. The nurse rubbed the lotion [PP in/ right into the small of his back].

Crucially for this chapter, the verbs that combine with directional particles all belong to the Primary Vocabulary. Fraser (1976) shows that these particles, whether literal or idiomatic, do not generally combine with verbs with either secondary or non-initial stress, such as discover, donate, insult, maintain, select, etc. The contrast can be seen in examples like (3-42a-d). (3-42)

Objects with Directional Ps: a. The prisoner broke her new furniture in/ up. *The prisoner destroyed her new furniture in/ up. b. I picked out/ up some new shirts. *I selected out/ up some new shirts.

30 By syntactic tests, these particles, even when adjacent to the verb, never form any lexical or phrasal constituent with them. Hence the almost universally accepted term, “phrasal verbs”, is misleading and inappropriate.

3.6 The syntax of the primary vocabulary: “Phrasal verbs” 

 105

c.

The manager put her new assistant off/ down. *The manager insulted her new assistant off/ up. d. You will find out that this car uses less fuel. *You will discover out that this car uses less fuel. Here are more such contrasts between primary and secondary verbs. In these examples, as expected, the latter cannot combine with post-verbal Directional Ps. All the acceptable verbs are extended monosyllables, and hence in the primary vocabulary. (3-43) They auctioned/ *discarded the cheaper paintings off. New windows might brighten/ *illuminate the old library up. Some workers have leveled off/ *landscaped off the neighbor’s back yard. The court divided up/ *disbursed up any remaining assets. Her children frittered away/ *expended away their inheritance. The family gathered up/ *collected up their few belongings. The police cordoned off/ *surrounded in the demonstrators. We have thus found another property that distinguishes English Primary and Secondary Vocabulary, which I will refer to as “Fraser’s Generalization”: only primary verbs combine freely with post-verbal particles, whether literal or idiomatic. It is very rare for a secondary verb to combine in this way. In the light of contrasts like (3-44) below, perhaps Fraser’s Generalization can be extended to other directional PPs. Verbs in the English Secondary Vocabulary seem resistant not only to directional particles (intransitive Ps), but also to full directional PPs. Both these constituent types are PPs whose head has a feature +DIR (directional):31 (3-44)

Let’s put/ *locate this statue onto the top shelf. They cut/ *eliminated the extra branches off the trunk. The sergeant sent/ *dispatched his platoon into the ravine. She broke/ *destroyed her new toy into pieces. They pulled/ *retrieved the bicycle onto the country road. A soldier lifted/ *elevated the flag over the edge.

31 There seems to be no restriction on non-directional, purely locational PP: Let’s locate this statue in the box. They eliminated the extra branches on the trunk.

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The extension of Fraser’s Generalization that I have in mind is as follows: (3-45)

Selection Condition on English Verbs. Only verbs in the English Primary Vocabulary can be in a selection relation with the feature DIR.

This is to say, only primary vocabulary verbs can select the feature DIR on the heads of phrasal sisters. (DIR is an obligatory or optional feature of many Ps such as into, onto, out of, toward, above, beside, near, etc.) More research is needed to determine whether the Selection Condition (3-45) is a viable extension of Fraser’s Generalization. But whichever formulation is ultimately appropriate, it is clear that the division into English Primary and Secondary Vocabulary plays a role in the syntax of categorial selection. At this point, a somewhat puzzling question arises. It is undeniable that verbs in both lexical subcomponents (including secondary “ditransitive” verbs like dedicate, distribute, introduce, present, propose, recommend, select, suggest, etc.) can select indirect objects headed by the Ps to and for, which plausibly spell out, respectively, the features +DIR or +GOAL. This obvious fact seems to conflict with adopting the Selection Condition (3-45) as an extension of Fraser’s Generalization. The resolution of this conflict lies in understanding the source and grammatical role of to/ for and their features +DIR and +GOAL. In particular, a generally accepted syntactic principle, widely termed the Case Filter (Chomsky 1986), requires that all DP arguments of a head must be assigned a case. A direct object DP typically receives case from the V that selects it, and is thereby interpreted to have whatever semantic role a particular verb class assigns to direct objects. A second DP complement selected by a V can then receive case only within a “minimal PP” (as determined by the Economy Principles) generated over this DP in order to satisfy the Case Filter. Such a PP then occurs as a sister of V, not by virtue of selection, but only so that its head P can assign case to a second DP object; this DP remains the constituent that the V actually selects. By itself, this minimal P is semantically inert, even though its unmarked feature value as a second complement to a transitive V is +DIR. Here are examples of such structures: (3-46) Direct and Indirect Object PPs; verbs and indirect objects are underlined. a. A manager showed/ demonstrated the new procedure to the staff. b. The manager makes/ produces a receipt for each customer. c. That company offered/ proposed better pay to the part timers. d. Please hand/ distribute some cake to the children. e. I got/ selected some new shirts for my brother.

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 107

The tree (3-47) illustrates the semantic “inertness” of these P with the feature DIR at LF; their role is only to assign case in PF. VP

(3-47) V

PP

DP i

show, propose, select,… direct object [P, DIR] Ø

DP j,

indirect object

This tree with an empty P illustrates the structure of indirect object DPs, as opposed to selected and interpreted PPs of Path/ Direction whose lexical heads are interpreted at LF.32 It seems that subcategorization features specify only interpreted constituents, suggesting that many ditransitive verbs in English (and probably cross-linguistically) are selected by the simple syntactic frame +___DP^DP, with no reference at all to the feature Direction/ Path on the case-assigning P. The overt Prepositions to and for are interpreted and inserted in (3-47) only in PF. If indirect objects are selected this way, there is no conflict between the Selection Condition (3-45) and examples (3-46). This conclusion that the category P plays no role in indirect object selection is confirmed by the fact that full PP complements of Direction (as opposed to PP adjuncts of static location) are incompatible with ditransitive verbs in the Secondary Vocabulary: (3-48)

a.

*We distributed the gifts onto the playground. Cf. a locative adjunct PP: We distributed the gifts on the playground b. *The agent introduced the new book into the travel section. Cf. a locative adjunct PP: The agent introduced the new book in the travel section. c. *Some soldiers displayed the flag off of the balcony. Cf. a locative adjunct PP: Some soldiers displayed the flag just below the balcony. d. *They elevated the speaker’s platform onto the stage. Cf. a locative adjunct PP: They elevated the speaker’s platform on the stage.

32 Quite a few primary verbs such as hand, send, slip and toss select either an indirect object DP or a PP of direction: Mary slipped the note to her friend/ under the door.

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 3 Regular inflections and contractions: Limits on grammatical irregularity

Thus, the feature for selecting indirect objects, namely +___DP^DP, is consistent with the Selection Condition (3-45) on secondary vocabulary verbs, and many of them freely accept indirect objects introduced by the case-assigning Ps to or for.33 This section started with the question (3-37ii), and has provided a positive answer. The Primary/ Secondary Vocabulary division does affect the productive syntax of English. Exactly how can be formulated either as Fraser’s Generalization or as an extension of it, using Condition (3-45). Note that this effect can be stated neither as a principle of UG nor as a simple lexical entry exemplifying Borer’s Conjecture (discussed in section 2.5.1), that is, as a single item in a language-particular Grammatical Lexicon. There thus appear to be aspects of language-particular syntax that fall between the two.

3.7 The syntax of the primary vocabulary: Indirect objects without Ps Both primary and secondary English verbs can take indirect objects realized in PPs with to or for; see again the examples (3-46). In Standard English almost all such verbs in the Primary Vocabulary, except the grammatical verbs do and say, can also position their indirect object (without a P) before the direct object. In contrast, indirect objects of secondary verbs without P are usually, and in some dialects always, ill-formed. (3-49) Indirect objects without Ps:34 a. A visitor showed/ *demonstrated the staff the new procedure. b. The manager makes/ *produces each customer a receipt. c. Please hand/ *distribute the children some cake. d. That company offered/ *proposed the part timers better pay. 33 The symbol ^ in a subcategorization frame A, ___B^C has the same meaning as when Chomsky (1965: ch. 2) introduced such frames: an item of category A takes two interpreted complements B and C (in that order, if frames are meant to specify order). A ditransitive verb thus has the frame V, __DP^DP. 34 Writing from a Generative Semantics perspective, Green (1974: ch. 3) provides a detailed review of the types of indirect object constructions available in English, including restrictions on which verbs can appear in various combinations. Green does not address the issue of a possible difference between primary versus secondary vocabulary, except to note that limiting eligible verbs with two bare DPs to those that evolved from Old English is not sufficient to explain which verbs can take double objects. She focuses on classifying the different types of double object constructions, ultimately concluding that no single movement rule can account for the variety of features that they display.

3.7 The syntax of the primary vocabulary: Indirect objects without Ps  

 109

e. I got/ *selected my brother some new shirts. f. Margaret told/ took/ *said/ *did her brother something strange. Dozens of English verbs with secondary or non-initial stress (from the Secondary Vocabulary) do not permit prepositionless double objects; as illustrated in (3-49). And as predicted in line 3 in Table (3-31), such verbs are invariably regularly inflected. (3-50) Some ditransitive secondary verbs: attribute, barbeque, compose, concoct, confess, contribute, construct, delegate, dedicate, demonstrate, dictate, distribute, donate, explain, fabricate, introduce, locate, permit, present, pronounce, refer, repair, report, reveal, submit, suggest, supply, translate, transmit, transport. This establishes a second syntactic difference between English Primary and Secondary Vocabularies. Descriptively, Standard English allows double objects with no P for all primary ditransitive verbs, but with relatively few or no secondary ditransitive verbs. Even though the status of P-less indirect objects seems different for Primary and Secondary Vocabulary in all Standard English dialects, some dialects appear to accept a limited number of secondary vocabulary verbs with P-less indirect objects, while other dialects or styles systematically reject them. The verbs with variable behavior include advance, allocate, deliver, distribute, and purchase.35 Here are some examples: (3-51) a. b. c. d.

?The boss advanced each department head a week’s budget. ?They should allocate some families two garages. ?The company delivered/ distributed us a new kind of bed. ?Our church will purchase the hospital a new lawn mower.

It may be that the more permissive usage, which accepts the examples in (3-51), will eventually replace the rather strict distinction of my own speech (3-49). In 35 Herriman’s (1995) extensive corpora study of verbs that exhibit P-less double DP objects divides to-datives from for-datives. She is mainly interested in enumerating double object verbs with non-initial stress, which yields four lists (1995: 61, 104, 124, 146). None of the verbs in (3-50) appear in these lists of such verbs. Given the proposal (3-35) that Extended Monosyllabic V can be primary, 17 of her 43 examples simply use Primary Vocabulary verbs (allow, bequeath, deny, etc.) and 6 others are compounds whose heads are primary verbs ( forbid, repay, telephone, etc.). The remaining 20 secondary verbs which Herriman found with P-less double objects are unacceptable in some dialects, but as observed above, some speakers accept them.

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this eventuality, the syntax of the construction with P-less indirect objects would then no longer distinguish the two vocabularies, as it does now.

3.8 The applicative inflection: A Nordic ghost in English grammar To find a well-grounded analysis for these “bare” (P-less) double DPs, we can look at some other languages that are syntactically close to English, at least regarding this construction. How do these other languages structurally express P-less Double Objects? There are indeed detailed generative studies of this very construction for several non-Indo-European languages. P-less Double Objects have been analyzed (with ample empirical data) for Bantu languages (Baker 1988, Alsina and Mchombo 1990), Chinese (den Dikken 1995), Indonesian (Chung 1976), and Mainland Scandinavian (Holmberg and Platzack 1995). The comparable and usually compatible results of these studies are brought together in the review article of Emonds and Ostler (2006). All these languages, as well as English, have several traits in common: (3-52) Conditions conducive to P-less double objects (i) Head-initial VPs and basically fixed word order, (ii) No morphological case on lexical nouns, and (iii) Indirect objects that precede direct objects. Their review brings out further notable similarities in the Double Object Constructions of these diverse languages, for example, the uniform passivizability of the verb-adjacent indirect object DP, and the (still somewhat mysterious) immunity of the same DP to both WH-type fronting and rightward Extraposition. Using these striking cross-linguistic parallels, Emonds and Ostler argue that this construction has the following uniform structural representation (3-53). (3-53)

VP [V,+F] V

DP +F indirect object

buy, send, show, make Ø

PP [P,+F] Ø

DP direct object

3.8 The applicative inflection: A Nordic ghost in English grammar  

 111

The cited sources provide a lot of evidence that the semantic indirect object behaves in surface structure like a direct object (for instance it exhibits “direct object agreement” in Bantu languages; see Baker 1988), and some evidence that the semantic direct object (that is, with the semantic role “Theme”) is inside a PP as in (3-53), even though no P here is overt. The extensive study of English Double Objects in Pesetsky (1995) provides corroborative evidence for this empty P. The question about the structure (3-53) now is, what motivates a non-pronounced F under V? Among the languages cited above for P-less Double Objects, all the non-Indo-European ones exhibit an overt inflectional suffix on V in the position of F (Bantu -er, Chinese -gei, Indonesian -kan). In current studies of these constructions, this bound morpheme F is called an “applicative suffix”, a practice I follow. This suffix is not used when the direct object DP is a semantic “Theme” but rather when what would normally be an unmarked V’s PP complement appears instead next to the verb, as in (3-53). Overall, almost every statement that holds of these constructions with overt applicative morphemes also holds of the P-less Double Objects of English and Mainland Scandinavian. These parallels suggest that the only specificity of the English and North Germanic variants is (3-54): the applicative inflection F is null in Germanic. (3-54) North Germanic Applicative. English and Mainland Scandinavian verbs have a phonologically null applicative inflection.36 It is common enough to find null counterparts in English to overt inflections in other closely or somewhat related Indo-European languages. Most Germanic and Romance languages spell out first- and second-person verb agreements with subjects, but English does not; most of them also have robust adjectival gender and number agreements with modified nouns, while the English versions of this agreement are null, except for the “pro-noun” one(s), (Emonds 2012b). Consequently, (3-54) is not surprising, but a mundane confirmation of Borer’s Conjecture for particular languages. A needed clarification about the tree (3-53) concerns the structural nature and role of the applicative suffix F. It seems straightforward to say that the F under V alternatively realizes the empty node [P, +F], which is located in a canonical post-object position for PPs. As the definition of AR (1-34) requires, both Fs are under X0 (a V and a P) which have projections (respectively V and PP) that 36 The affinity of the P-less double object constructions in Middle English and Old Norse (the ancestors of Modern English and Mainland Scandinavian) is one of many syntactic reasons given in Emonds and Faarlund (2014) that English is a North Germanic language.

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 3 Regular inflections and contractions: Limits on grammatical irregularity

are sisters. The higher F is zero because it is specified as null in the English grammatical lexicon (its counterparts in Bantu, Chinese and Indonesian are overt). The lower F in canonical position under P is licensed as null by virtue of being an unmarked instance of AR. The remaining question about (3-53) concerns the actual content of the feature F. To determine this, I start with an established difference between assigning semantic “Theta Roles” to DP arguments of V and P. For objects of P, their semantic roles are uniquely determined by the feature content of P (±DIR, ±SOURCE, etc.). But this doesn’t hold for the so-called “structurally case-marked” DP arguments of a V; that is, in the subject and direct object positions of a clause, a variety of roles can be assigned. How this works can be seen in the oft discussed “spray/ load” verb alternations. These verbs select the underlined P heads of PPs in (3-55), which assign semantic Theta Roles to their objects, and then the bold direct objects and subjects of the Vs are assigned whatever roles are “left over” in the verb’s argument structure. (3-55) They loaded the books onto the truck. They loaded the truck with books. The spectators overflowed into the parking lot. The parking lot overflowed with spectators. They stripped the paint off the railing. They stripped the railing of paint.

Direct object assigned Theme Direct object assigned Location Subject assigned Theme Subject assigned Location Direct object assigned Theme Direct object assigned Location

These patterns suggest two invariant interpretive principles of UG: (3-56) UG Assignment of Semantic (Theta) Roles to DPs a. An interpreted P assigns its basic feature as the Semantic Role of its object, with Theme as a default role if P is uninterpreted. b. A DP argument of a V can have any Semantic Role in V’s argument structure. I now take the so far unspecified F in (3-53) to be [PØ, DIR], where P itself lacks LF content – exactly what chapter 1 introduced as the property of the Cancellation Feature Ø. This subscripted PØ notates this uninterpreted status. As a result, its object (the second DP) must by the default option in (3-56a) be a Theme. The first object DP can by (3-56b) then receive any role “left over” in the ditransitive verb’s entry, such as Goal/ Benefactive. Hence, when the tree (3-53) is specified with Semantic Roles, it becomes:

3.8 The applicative inflection: A Nordic ghost in English grammar  

 113

VP

(3-57)  [V, PØ, DIR] V

PØ, DIR

buy, send, show, make Ø(

DP

PP

Goal, Benefactive by lexical entry)

PØ, DIR Ø(

DP

by AR) Theme

The lexical entry in English (more generally, North Germanic) for the null Applicative inflection is thus (3-58); this entry can generate P-less double object structures with any ditransitive verbs. The word-internal subcategorization frame is leftmost in the lexical entry and thereby indicates that the null suffix’s host is in the canonical position of a V, that is, the head of a VP (cf. section 1.4.4). (3-58) Applicative suffix entry for North Germanic. , PØ, +DIR, Ø In section 3.6, we saw that the standard lexical specification for verbs that select double objects (such as buy, send, show and make) is simply V, +___DP^DP, where the case-assigning P is present due to the Case Filter and not by virtue of the selection feature itself. It is evident that this very same specification can also select the complement structure (3-57), provided that the verb has the applicative suffix in (3-58). So it turns out that a single subcategorization frame for an English double object verb selects both the standard sequence DP-PP and, thanks to the available applicative suffix, the reverse order with the indirect object first.37 Were no other factor involved in double object verbs, this would mean that the so-called “dative movement” alternation in English would be fully productive, leading to uniform acceptability of both members of the pairs in (3-49), counter to fact. But section 3.6 has shown that there is an additional interacting factor, namely Condition (3-45), repeated here for convenience. (3-45) Selection Condition on English Verbs. Only verbs in the English Primary Vocabulary can be in a selection relation with the feature DIR. Because the lexical entry for the applicative suffix (3-58) violates this independently motivated restriction (see again section 3.6), no Secondary Vocabulary verb of the type needed in (3-57) can be formed, so that ditransitive verbs from this lexical component are not compatible with P-less double object constructions. 37 The system of theta role assignment here, which depends on an optional DIR under V in (3.57), renders unnecessary the indirect object movement in Larson (1988) or Emonds and Ostler (2006).

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Summarizing, this section has proposed an integrated analysis of all English double object constructions: (3-59) a.

All English double objects in (3-46) and (3-49) result from the same selection frame __DP^DP, where the second DP must receive case from some P. b. The second DP either receives case and Theta Role from to or for, or it receives case and the default Theta Role Theme in a PP whose head is empty in LF. c. As an argument of V, the first DP can receive any Role not assigned in (b).

It is apparently as economical to insert a zero morpheme using (3-58) as it is to insert to or for under P, since the alternation between the two double object constructions seems uniformly optional.38

3.9 Conclusions about the divided lexicon In light of these syntactic differences between English verbs in the Primary and Secondary Vocabularies, Table (3-31) should now be extended as in (3-60). Lines e and f are productive syntactic properties of the particular grammar GE of Standard English; these characteristics cannot be attributed either to UG on the one hand, or to single items in the English-particular Grammatical Lexicon on the other. (3-60) Core or Primary Vocabulary

Secondary Vocabulary

a Mundane and more general meanings: eat, drink, swallow, smell, sweat

More specific meanings: devour, imbibe, consume, aroma, perspire

b Restrictive phonology, e.g., in English, items must be Extended Monosyllables.

Phonological richness, such as secondary stress or more complex second syllables

38 The few verbs with obligatory P-less indirect objects, such as allow and deny, are lexically listed as obligatorily combining with the applicative inflection via an additional word-internal frame .

3.9 Conclusions about the divided lexicon 

c

 115

Possible irregular inflection, e.g. past Only productive inflections, e.g. –ed past on V, only –s plurals on N, etc. tenses other than –ed; irregular plurals

d Synthetic grading of adjectives (-er,est): saner, stupidest, tighter, sourest

Free morphemes must compare A: *insaner, *morbidest, *tauter, *dourest

e

Verbs can select +DIR Ps: both postverbal particles P and directional PPs.

Verbs with post-verbal particles P or directional PP complements are rare.

f

Verbs can have P-less indirect objects. Indirect objects require overt Ps.

The English constructions studied in this chapter’s last sections demonstrate that there are language-particular syntactic properties that differentiate distinct subclasses of open class vocabulary, and hence are not confined to items in the Grammatical Lexicon. The path taken in this chapter to reach these implications of Table (3-60) has been rather circuitous, given that the initial questions were quite narrow in scope: why can verbal and other inflections be robustly irregular (despite the available default regularities) for some but, compared to the total number, very few, lexical heads, and when instead are inflections required to be regular? After introducing a first factor that, one might say, even favors irregularity (the local structural source of some inflections), these questions led to a rather far-reaching proposal for a Divided Open Class Lexicon, in which inflectional (ir)regularity is only one factor. Other factors (the phonological form of words, the grading of adjectives, the syntax of double objects) at least superficially seem unrelated to this volume’s main topic, the morphosyntax of English verbs. Nonetheless, these other factors fit into a more complex argument. This chapter’s proposals have followed a not unfamiliar methodology in science, perhaps most cogently laid out in Lakatoš (1978). The author of that essay justifies and elaborates on a research methodology called “Sophisticated Falsificationalism”, based on Karl Popper’s Falsification Criterion for distinguishing science from non-science. As in other sciences, a grammatical theory privileges exceptionless statements. So for a theory of predictive morphosyntax, the synchronic phenomenon of irregular inflection scattered about in the open class vocabulary is a falsifying anomaly. This problem should therefore be remedied by a better theory with more predictive power. The main tool for fashioning a better theory, according to Lakatoš, is the construction of a revised theory containing auxiliary hypotheses, which predict central aspects of the anomalies with no loss of the previous theory’s descriptive

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coverage. The division made here into Primary and Secondary Vocabularies is such an auxiliary hypothesis, because it correctly predicts that the vast number of Secondary Vocabulary items can tolerate no irregular inflectional morphology. And they do not. The next step, according to Lakatoš, is to determine whether the newer theory can be deemed part of a Progressive Research Program (and hence be accepted as confirmed). This happens only if its auxiliary hypotheses have “Excess Content”, that is, they make significant predictions not even suspected previously of being related to the original but now predicted anomaly (that is, the widespread, sporadic and yet limited inflectional irregularity among open class items). This is the role of lines d, e, and f of Table (3-60); these predictions are the Excess Content of the Divided Lexicon. For the first time, we can correctly predict what have been previously thought of as unsystematic variations in synchronic English. For its huge Secondary Vocabulary, which goes beyond the Primary Vocabulary’s limitation to Extended Monosyllables (3-33), there appear three new exceptionless statements: (3-61)

Exceptionless Properties of the English Secondary Vocabulary a. There is no synthetic grading of adjectives; b. Phrasal verb collocations with directional particles are ill-formed; and c. P-less double objects are ungrammatical in the most restrictive Standard dialect.

These are all three understood as properties limited to the newly formalized concept of a Secondary Vocabulary. In the Primary Vocabulary, synthetic grading, free formation of phrasal verb combinations, and P-less double objects are all permitted and in fact are among the most productive hallmarks of English. Yet the Secondary Vocabulary bans them all. In this sense, the grammar of the Secondary Vocabulary items more directly reflects Universal Grammar, while that of the Primary Vocabulary is the locus of what children must learn as a supplement to UG, in order to master their “native tongue.”

4 Polyfunctional –ing: Can any other language match it? 4.1 Morphosyntactic properties of English non-finite clauses Chapters 1 and 2 analyzed the structure of English finite clauses, that is, clauses in which subject-verb agreement can appear, in terms of two phrasal categories IP and VP, the first of which contains the second: [IP DP – I – VP].1 As seen in those chapters, the overt signs of the presence of I and IP in an English clause are those in (4-1). (4-1) The nine signs of I i. non-agreeing English modals (he can/ will/ dare not, etc.), all in I position; ii. a contracted suffix n’t on I of clausal negation; iii. an auxiliary do in I rather than V position; iv. emphatic affirmative counterparts of n’t, so and too: He has too/ so left town. v. subject pronouns in nominative/ subjective case: I, we, he, she, they; vi. finite forms of the copula in I: am, is, are, was, were, ain’t; vii. finite irregular Past Tenses in VP sisters of I: ate, broke, came, gave, etc. viii. third person number agreement with subjects, either in I or in VP sisters of I; ix. complementizers that and if, which must be followed by IP. These nine phonologically overt and readily observable patterns are never present in non-finite VPs; that is, what traditional grammar calls infinitives, gerunds and participles.2 The distinctions between VP and IP listed in (4-1) are absolute; there

1 Current syntax literature is divided on whether to use the symbol I (originally “Inflection”) or T (Tense) for this category. I was favored in 1985-2000, partly because it was realized that grammatical Tense does not always originate in this position; see chapter 2 here for a development of this view. T came to be favored after 2000, because verbal Inflection seemed to suggest Agreement, which many languages lack. My use of I for this universal category makes no claim about Agreement outside the Germanic, Romance, and Slavic systems most familiar to me. 2 English imperatives in main clauses have seven of the non-finite properties in (4-1), but not (ii) and (iii). Imperatives use both n’t and the auxiliary do: Don’t (you/ anybody) do that. Langerová (2015) demonstrates that in Jonathan Swift’s early eighteenth-century essay, A Modest Proposal for the English Language, the auxiliaries do and have had another special I https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110734379-005

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is no continuum or “cline” or “squish” in English grammar that obscures the boundary between finite and non-finite clauses. All types of English grammars indicate that in addition to finite clauses, which exhibit the nine signs of I, English has two morphological means of forming (usually subordinate) non-finite clauses, sometimes also called semiclauses. These structures are bracketed in (4-2)-(4-3). (4-2)

Gerunds (a) and participles (b): verbs suffixed with –ing a. [Him/ His [(not) cleaning house] and [being so much in bars]] upset her. She compared [your doing the laundry] to [her son writing his homework]. b. The tourists [having been vaccinated] left the clinic [feeling more secure]. Next year, the company will begin [sending customers out refunds].

(4-3) Infinitives, introduced by to (c), or “bare infinitives” without to (d) c. [To know him] is [to love him]. She would prefer (her husband) [not to have taken so many days off in winter]. d. We saw him [not do his job properly] and made him [apologize to the staff]. The girls will go [look for fuel] and then [help [repair the truck]]. Although traditional grammars seldom stress this, these four types of semi-clauses systematically lack all of the finiteness properties listed in (4-1). A reader can verify this (their lack of I) by further testing for acceptability more examples as in (4-4): (4-4) *The company began daring not send refunds: violates (4-1i). *She would prefer (for him) to haven’t taken so many days off: violates (4-1ii). *The company seems to do owe customers lots of refunds: violates (4-1iii). *We saw him too criticize the staff: violates (4-1iv). *He not doing the laundry surprises me: violates (4-1v). *They can’t make you are at the meeting tomorrow: violates (4-1vi). *For him to ate so much was silly: violates (4-1vii). *You have to study to gets a good job: violates (4-1viii). *She hopes that to find a nice boyfriend: violates (4-1ix).

property. The now archaic agreeing forms hath and doth appear only in I, in contrast to the forms has and does, which for Swift were invariably under V.

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We can account for all these incompatibilities by generalizing across non-finite clauses: (4-5) English non-finite (or semi-) clauses. English non-finite clauses are V-headed phrases which are not complements (= sisters) of the category I. Morphologically, these are either infinitives or VPs whose head carries the suffix -ing. An author who assumes, by say an a priori commitment to uniform clause structure, that all English non-finite constructions include IPs above their VPs, immediately takes on the burden of explaining why all these IPs lack all the nine properties of (4-1).3 Such analyses sometimes provide proposals for why semiclauses lack nominative case (4-1v) and agreement (4-1viii), but these accounts are stipulative (non-explanatory), and moreover do not extend to cover the other seven properties of IP.

4.2 Three structures for English semi-clauses This and the next chapter propose principles that predict which type of English semi-clause (among participles, gerunds or infinitives) appears in given syntactic positions. This will allow us to dispense with Rosenbaum’s (1967) many verb-particular and construction-specific subcategorizations for different types of non-finite clauses. The only subcategorization (or “constituent selection”) frames needed for all the semi-clause complement types in (4-2) and (4-3) will turn out to be a few simple variants of the single contextual feature +__V. An integrated analysis based on this hypothesis will be built around the following Principle:4

3 A reviewer objects that this volume holds “that all non-finite clause types (infinitives, gerunds, and participles) contain VP but not IP (TP), but doesn’t critically evaluate evidence that has led other researchers to assume the opposite.” But there is actually no evidence at all that leads “other researchers to assume the opposite,” though the reviewer rightly notes that many do. The fact that non-finite clauses invariably have subject DPs (Koster and May 1982) has become irrelevant to this point, since later Government and Binding typically assumes that subject DPs originate inside VP and not in IP. So internal subjects, and the need for them in, for example, accounting for the distribution of Bound Anaphors, no longer motivate the presence of an IP (orTP) inside non-finite clauses. 4 This principle conforms to a claim of Baltin (1987) and Kubo (1992) that only morpheme categories X and not phrasal categories XP appear in lexical entries.

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(4-6) Minimal Structure. The lexical feature Y, +__X means “Y selects a minimal well-formed phrasal projection headed by the category X.” Before undertaking this massive simplification in the lexical entries selecting nonfinite complements, there is one option, namely bare infinitives, that is orthogonal to this chapter’s main concerns and requires separate treatment, which will allow for the moment putting it to the side prior to chapter 6.

4.2.1 Bare Infinitives as incomplete projections of V Among English semi-clauses, it is paradoxical that the superficially simplest type, bare infinitives, has the most restricted distribution. One might wonder, shouldn’t the simple frame __V systematically easily give rise to bare infinitives? Yet besides being sisters of I, bare VPs can only be complements of a few very basic active Vs, in particular come, go, run, dare, need, make, let, have, help, see, hear and watch, as in (4-7a-b).5 Bare infinitives never serve as any type of subject or adjunct clause (4-7c-d), nor can they be complements of any other category (4-7e). In the followig examples, as is standard, the notation *(α) means that omitting α is ungrammatical. (4-7) Restricted distribution of bare infinitives a. Only a few active verbs allow bare infinitive complements: He let/ had/ helped/ made/ watched his partner spend that money. b. Passives never allow bare infinitive complements: *His partner was let/ had/ helped/ made/ watched spend that money. c. Subject clauses can never be bare infinitives: It was easy *(to) fix the sink. *(To) Clean the house doesn’t bother him. d. Adjuncts cannot be bare infinitives: John cleaned the house *(to) help his parents. She found a repairman *(to) fix the sink. The ladder is long enough *(to) reach the roof.

5 For a complete list of these verbs and an analysis, see Veselovská (2016). The restricted distribution of this English construction seems akin to that of restructuring verbs in Italian (Rizzi: 1978). A few other bare infinitives are introduced by items sometimes called Prepositions. But these items, underlined in the following, are not interpreted as contentful Ps of time, place, manner, etc. He does nothing but/ except read comics.? She’d rather do anything than watch football.

4.2 Three structures for English semi-clauses 

e.

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Complements to Noun and Adjective cannot be bare infinitives: *Competent help take care of our parents is hard to find. Cf. I hope someone will help take care of our parents. *She wasn’t so daring drive her old car through Mexico. Cf. She didn’t dare drive her old car through Mexico.

The many excluded positions of bare infinitives in (4-7) can be descriptively unified: (4-8) English bare infinitives appear only as complements of an item whose only features are possible syntactic (not purely semantic) features of V. That is, a bare infinitive cannot be selected by any item with either a purely semantic feature or a non-verbal feature of any type. What can explain this odd and yet stringent restriction? The fact is, it has not been generally recognized that the few verbs that can introduce bare infinitives listed in (4-7a) are akin to auxiliary verbs (another category generally not successfully characterized); these verbs are not fully independent predicates. That is, the verbs that introduce bare infinitives need lexical verbs in order to create fully interpreted VPs. They are thus functional heads of category V that modify VPs headed by lexical Vs of almost any sort. The puzzling distribution of bare infinitives results from combining two (or more) Vs in a single verbal projection, just as auxiliary verbs like be and have combine with lexical content verbs. These infinitives are the non-initial V (and complements) inside single VP structures with multiple verbs [VP V – V – . . .].6 Integrating this conclusion, the types of independent English semi-clause VPs whose distributions are still to be accounted for reduce to three: to-infinitives, participles based on V-ing, and gerunds based on V-ing.

4.2.2 The external structure of to-infinitives To fully analyze each type of semi-clause, we first need to know its basic structure. For to-infinitives, I adapt the transparent but rarely postulated structure (4-9) of Duffley and Abida (2009), who observe that it reflects the historical origin of to as a P of Direction (Abraham 2004). I propose further that the synchronic P 6 In studies of non-Indo-European languages, such structures are usually called “serial verbs”. I am not concerned here with whether all such structures in other languages contain a reduced VP sister to the first V.

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to that selects the V-headed phrase is an uninterpreted PØ; see (1-16) in chapter 1 for the definition and discussion of the Cancellation Feature notated with the subscript Ø.7 (4-9) to-infinitive Structure:

PP

to-infinitive

[PØ, DIR]

VP

to

delay the work

bare infinitive

This structure can only result from a lexical entry as in (4-10). (4-10) Lexical entry of infinitival to.

PØ, DIR, +___V, to8

One should not be misled by the PP in this structure. Because its PØ is not interpreted, the infinitival structure (4-9) cannot satisfy any subcategorization that selects P: *He put his new car to drive to work; *Her views led to not take planes. Outside of selection, however, there is solid evidence for the PP category of infinitives. For instance, the general phrase-final distribution of to-infinitives with the structure (4-9) mimics that of the familiar PPs expressing space/ time, which are also phrase-final. In contrast to structure (4-9), Government and Binding analyses regularly assume, with Rosenbaum (1967), that the phrasal label above VP in infinitives is the same as for finite clauses, for instance, IP (or TP). It is then a short step to concluding that the marker to is of category I (or T); this assumption has remained pretty much unchallenged for a half century, the view of Duffley and Abida (2009) being exceptional. But there really is no evidence for assuming that English infinitives contain I. First, finite clauses and infinitives share no movement property that would set them off from other phrases. Second, while both types of clauses have internal DP sub-

7 The reader is reminded that an uninterpreted feature FØ here means exactly that, and is unrelated to the term “uninterpretable feature” in Minimalist accounts of Movement. In Minimalist terms, uninterpretable features F move to positions where the same feature F is interpretable. In my view, this is a complex way of expressing the idea of “Structure-preserving Movement” (Emonds 1976; 2012a), and this constitutes a different topic. 8 Claiming that infinitival P to selects a bare infinitive seems to contravene (4-7), whereby bare infinitives can only be complements of verbs. But the P in (4-9) has no interpreted feature except DIR, a feature shared with V. (4-8) in fact permits to to have a bare infinitive complement. Similarly in French, the unmarked infinitival marker de ‘from/ of’ need not have any interpreted feature.

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jects, no definition of “subject of VP” accepted in Government and Binding has ever stipulated that a given category label (such as IP) must immediately dominate the subject DP. Third and importantly, Government and Binding and Minimalism have not gotten beyond unmotivated stipulations as to why the category of finite I regularly assigns specifically nominative case to subject DPs, while overt subject DPs of infinitives, in English and many other languages, are never nominative: Mary would prefer (for) us/ *we to stay put this summer.9 By simply dropping the idea entirely that the infinitival marker to has anything to do with I or IP, the frustratingly inconclusive debate about when and why I does or doesn’t “govern”, “properly govern” or “assign case” disappears.10 For these reasons then, I adopt without hesitation the non-conventional infinitival structure (4-9). Regarding interpretation of these infinitives, Čakanyová (2018) argues that the English to represents and, in unmarked structures, is interpreted as the mood IRREALIS. That is, its feature complex [PØ, DIR] should be related to the feature I (=IRREALIS) justified in chapter 1. For achieving this, two lines of analysis suggest themselves: (i) In general interpretive terms, the canceled feature PØ means that this P is not associated with Space and Time. Quite plausibly, neither is a VP or IP introduced by such a P. Such a clause, detached from physical reality so to speak, must be Irrealis. (ii) As a specific case, to typically assigns “unattained” status to its complement (Duffley and Abida 2009), so that when to is dissociated from Space and Time, that is, reality, this unattained state, a proposition or predicate, is interpreted as Irrealis. These two approaches to the semantics of to seem compatible; and both may hold. With respect to negated infinitives, Čakanyová (2018: ch. 2) argues that a split infinitive (to not eat) is not clausal negation, but is rather constituent negation of a VP. Each placement of to is thus an instance of constituent negation, but of

9 There are many analyses that describe the absence of nominative case assignment in infinitives, but without exception they involve a stipulation about two kinds of I. In this work, this ad hoc division is replaced by the well motivated distinction between I and P. 10 There are several paradigms where the infinitive marker to plays a role in licensing null VPs in English (Lobeck 1995), but unlike the modals and the auxiliary do in I, the P to doesn’t by itself suffice for this licensing: We could buy a new car, but have no reason to, vs. *We need to fix our sink, but can’t find a plumber to.

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different XPs. namely of the VP (split infinitives) or of the PP expressing GOAL (no splitting).11 Neither placement of not is clausal negation, since I is absent.

4.2.3 The external structures of participles and gerunds Section 4.1 established that the internal structures of present participles and gerunds contain VP but lack I. Their identical internal structures account for their parallel internal make-up, and have led some authors (Huddleston and Pullum 2002) to consider them a single construction. There are nonetheless good reasons to adhere to traditional grammar and continue distinguishing them. In particular, participles are introduced by [A Ø] and gerunds by [N Ø]. Besides their distributional differences reviewed below, which are due to their distinct phrasal categories (AP for present participles and NP for gerunds), the “tops” of these two projections are different and so distinguish their syntax. Participles are nothing more than the structure just described, namely [AP [A Ø] – [VP . . .V – ing. . .]]. Thus, in the following examples, the participial AP contains no internal subject: Harry continued [AP delaying the work]; they took a week off, [AP delaying the work]. (4-11) Participial Structure:

AP VP

AØ Ø

delay-ing the work

Gerunds, in contrast, embed this structure in a larger functional projection DP: (4-12) Gerund Structure:

DP D that/ any/ her

NP NØ Ø

VP delay-ing the work

11 Thus, the placement of not before or after to depends on whether the situation expressed by VP is negated (i), or whether the GOAL expressed by P is negated (ii): (i) He is going to London to not be present during the exam. [The exam isn’t in London.] (ii) He is going to London not to be present during the exam but to see a play. [The exam can be in London.]

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In order to empirically support the distinct structures (4-11) and (4-12), I compare some complement structures that are uncontroversially considered to be NP gerunds with types of complements that have been argued to not be NPs, in Rosenbaum (1967) and Emonds (1985: ch. 2). Among verbs and prepositions that select clauses headed by V-ing, there are four classes which require present participles rather than NPs. (4-13) Classes of heads with participial complements (underlined) a. Intransitive temporal aspect verbs: She might be/ begin/ cease/ (dis-) continue/ finish/ go on/ keep (on)/ resume/ start/ stop eating such strong cheese.12 b. Prepositions (= subordinating conjunctions) of time: He asked for a beer after/ before/ when/ while turning on the television. c. A few transitive perception verbs (hear, feel, see, watch) whose complements alternate with bare infinitives. We watched her burn(ing) the letters. They heard you sing(ing) loudly. d. Transitive verbs of “apprehension”: The guard didn’t arrest/ catch/ discover/ find/ notice/ observe/ record/ spot Harry stuffing/ *stuff his pockets. We can be sure that the underlined constituents in (4-13c-d) are complements of verbs and not “reduced relative clauses” inside objects, because the latter cannot modify objects that are proper nouns, as seen in (4-14): (4-14) {The minister/ *President Macron} playing video games refused to answer. {The girl/ *Mary} studying Latin in the library got a phone call. Let’s move to {some area / * Greenland} getting more rain than previously. Rather, the underlined clauses in (4-13c-d) are complement sisters of verbs of perception/ apprehension and so not subject to this restriction, as they would be if they were reduced relatives: (4-15)

They discovered/ heard/ spotted President Macron playing video games. John caught/ found/ noticed Mary studying Latin in the library. Scientists can observe/ record / watch Greenland getting more rain now.

12 Except for its special finite morphology, English continuous or progressive aspect, be + V +ing, is a temporal aspect verb no different from the others in the list here. It is not a special construction, no matter how frequent it is or how pedagogical sources treat it.

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Outside of the four subtypes in (4-13), complements headed by V-ing of all other verbs and prepositions (avoid, discuss, tolerate, about, from, in, etc.) are NP gerunds. This difference between participles (4-11) and gerunds (4-12) is justified by several empirical contrasts. (i) Because of the D projection and consequently the possible initial possessive DP in gerunds (4-12), the underlined modifiers in (4-16a) are grammatical, while corresponding items in the participles in (4-16b) are not. (4-16) a.

D projection modifiers of gerunds We must now avoid any delaying the meeting. They should discuss their children’s renting a car. We can’t tolerate this delaying the job for no reason. The manager encouraged (his friend’s/ our/ that) drinking wine at lunch. The company undertook (all that) buying up small businesses. b. D projection modifiers excluded in participles They won’t now keep (*any) delaying the meeting. They should resume (* their children’s) renting a car. The boss caught John (*this) delaying the job for no reason. The manager went on (*his friend’s/ *our/ *that) drinking wine at lunch. The journalist noticed the town (*all that) buying up small businesses.

(ii)

A second difference is that as DPs, gerunds can passivize while AP participles cannot. Gerund objects thus contrast with the homonymous participle complements selected by temporal aspect verbs. Thus, as shown in Rosenbaum (1967), the V-ing complements of these latter fail to act like DPs.

(4-17)

Passivization of gerunds but not participles Rebuilding their house will be discussed/ *resumed by our neighbours. Attending a local college has been considered/ *continued by our neighbour.

(iii) A third diagnostic distinguishing participles from gerunds is that participles (APs) cannot be the focus in cleft sentences; such constituents can only be DPs or PPs: (4-18)

Focused gerunds vs. non-fucusable participial complements a. after temporal aspect verbs It is drinking beer from the bottle that she likes/ *keeps. It was painting the house that I undertook/ *went on. It was attending a local college that he considered/ *continued.

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b. after transitive verbs It was buying herself clothes that John discussed with/ *watched Mary. It was stealing the money that she talked about/ *caught him. It’s asking about a new job that they suspected her of *heard her. Despite their identical morphology, the tests in (4-16)-(4-18) clearly distinguish participles from gerunds. Gerunds are always generated as sisters to D, and thus they form DPs. In fact, this conclusion is already established in Wasow and Roeper (1972), who convincingly argue that all gerunds contain an internal subject, either overt or covert. Because participles are APs that do not further project, for them an internal subject is uniformly excluded. The distributional tests above thus support the structural distinction between NP gerunds (which project to DPs) and AP participles (which do not).13

4.2.4 English semi-clauses as Extended Projections The typical structures for the three types of English non-finite clauses are thus PP (4-9) for to-infinitives, AP (4-11) for present participles, and DP (4-12) for gerunds. They all fall into place as regular examples of English extended projections: (4-19) English Extended Projections (EP) a. A DP dominating D and NP is an Extended Projection (of NP). b. An IP dominating I and VP is an Extended Projection (of VP).14 c. AP and PP do not require parallel functional category extensions; they are EP. These disjunctive definitions suggest that some more general conception of Extended Projection might unify the three parts of (4-19); such a conception may also help explain the restricted distribution of bare infinitives summarized earlier in (4-7a-e).

13 Another argument for analyzing pre-nominal participles as APs is that they conform to a general English word order condition on placing AP attributes of Nouns. According to Černá (2016), English as well as Czech participles follow a general rule for these APs: they precede a noun if and only if they lack post-modification: Some protesting (*higher fees) students vs. some students protesting higher fees. 14 Many analysts who use the symbols DP and IP assume further “intermediate phrasal projections” D′ between DP and D and I′ (or T′) between IP and I, following Chomsky (1986). Nonetheless, there is no solid empirical evidence for these D′ and I′ constituents.

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Ever since the seminal work of Fukui and Speas (1986), there has arisen a vaguely expressed consensus among generativists that UG associates each of the four lexical heads X (=N, V, A, P) with restricted series of higher purely syntactic modifying heads, called “functional sequences”. These functional heads are in the same “extended projections” as the lexical head they modify, and the category-specific associations between each lexical head and its possible syntactic modifiers are presumably the very essence of human language’s Logical Forms.15 Let us therefore use the term Extended Projection (Xext) for the highest projection in sequences of functional heads modifying a given lexical head X. In this vein, I and D are then usually the highest (and obligatory) heads with features that are both syntactic (not purely semantic) and associated in LF with V and N respectively. A further bond between these modifying features and their lexical heads is proposed in van Riemsdijk (1998), who shows that the features of a head’s functional modifiers can generally also be realized on the head itself, albeit differently in different languages. For example head Ns can spell out overtly (i) the Case and Definiteness of D (Proper Nouns being inherently Definite), (ii) a Plural value of Q, (iii) collective plurals (grammatically singular Ds and Ns with plural reference, such as every and team), (iv) Dual Number, (v) Grammatical Gender, etc. (4-20) Extended Projections of lexical heads X.16 a. Xext is the highest phrase headed by X0 such that any interpreted head features modifying X are possible syntactic modifiers of X. b. In English, the heads of Vext and Next cannot have the purely semantic features characteristic of open class heads. With respect to verbs, a Vext is indeed generally IP. But there are other constructions, for example infinitives, where the highest projection of V that satisfies (4-20a) is not IP. In the PP structure for to-infinitives (4-9), the only interpreted feature external to VP is the syntactic feature DIR; PØ is uninterpreted. Since DIR can be associated in LF not only with P but also with Vs of motion, Vext for infintives turns out to be not an IP, but this PP.17 15 A volume such as this, which concentrates on one language, is not the place to explore the many cross-linguistic ramifications of such functional sequences. 16 Although this section argues that “bare infinitive VPs” are not extended projections in English, it may be that in other languages, bare VPs, like English PPs or APs, may count as EPs. I confess that I am less than certain about how various principles of syntactic theory, such as the Binding Theory, should utilize the concept of Extended Projections. 17 There are other configurations where PP is an Extended Projection of a clausal structure. Since Fukui and Speas (1986) and Chomsky (1986), authors have generally used C for the category of the complementizers if and that (±WH), where only features of C and not C itself plays a role

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And for that matter, the Vext in gerunds (4-12) is a DP, which immediately dominates a semantically empty D0 and an NP with a second empty head NØ. In participles (4-11), Vext is the immediately dominating AP, also containing an uninterpreted head AØ. The definition (4-20a) thus seems to work well in picking out the phrasal units named in traditional grammars as the main types of English semi-clauses, and they are all are unified here under the rubric of “Extended Projections”. By (4-20b), neither bare VPs nor bare NPs can serve as Xext, so bare VP complements are phrasal projections but actually not Extended Projections of Vs. The lowest Vext that dominates a bare VP is rather a projection of the closed class grammatical verb that introduces it, whose only features (like those of auxiliaries) are both syntactic and associated with V in UG. As an illustration of EPs, consider the structures in (4-21). In (4-21a), neither VP is an Extended Projection. Given the word order in which the DP Mary precedes the V sing, one should probably just say that the lower V does not head any Extended Projection, because otherwise it would violate the English requirement that heads in phrases are initial. (4-21)

a. [IP John will [VP hear Mary [VP sing Carmen]]]. b. John will [VP urge Mary [PP [DIR to] [VP sing Carmen]]].

In (4-21b) on the other hand, the main verb has a to-infinitive complement. The only interpreted feature of the PØ to is DIR, which also doubles as a feature of V, where it appears on standard verbs of motion. (Since PØ itself carries the Cancellation Feature, P is uninterpreted.) So in this case, a PP is the Extended Projection Vext headed by sing, which in turn is the selected complement of the open class verb urge. Extended Projections are the central players in syntactic constructions that are largely regulated by Universal Grammar. EPs are the only constituents larger than words that are allowed to move, at least in theories with a restrictive concept of movement. Moreover, domains that serve as “bounding nodes” for subjacency (Chomsky 1977) are always a subset of the set of EPs { Xext }, and it is conceivable that in some languages, the two sets fully coincide.

at LF. For many reasons given in Emonds (1985: ch. 7), both if and that are rather uninterpreted Ps (PØ in the notation of chapter 1 here) subcategorized as +___I. Material in Spec(PP) blocks long distance movement through it, just like material in Spec(CP) What did that horse have to jump (?*right/ *five meters) over? Given these (unanswered) arguments, there is no reason to unparsimoniously add a separate C to the inventory of grammatical categories.

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Importantly for the rest of this chapter, the central selection principle of Minimal Structure (4-6) needs to be refined: (4-22) Minimal Extended Projections. The lexical feature Y, +__X means “Y selects a minimal well-formed phrasal projection headed by the category X. If X ≠Y, the selected projection must additionally be an Extended Projection Xext. Keep in mind that an Xext need not be XP; for example Vext can be IP (a finite clause), DP (gerunds), AP (participles) or PP (to-infinitives). In fact, it cannot be a VP. In conclusion, I claim that non-finite semi-clauses of English are not structurally IPs, even though this runs counter to the assumption of most generative work since Chomsky (1981). Nonetheless, these semi-clauses, like IPs (which are not projections of V either), are Extended Projections Vext of V.

4.3 What is this thing spelled –ing? The head V of a wide range of English non-finite clauses, that is, VPs with no sign of an I (or T) sister, is marked with the regular suffix –ing. These include participles and gerunds, but of course not infinitives. Curiously, this single morpheme has remarkably many other uses in English. It is also the word-internal righthand head of homonymous derived lexical items, such as the adjectives in very moving and the chattering children and the nouns in many spaceship sightings and the hygienic preparing of food. Notably, the latter derived nouns and adjectives have not only semantic but also sometimes syntactic properties of the verbs they are derived from.

4.3.1 Lexical uses of –ing in derivational morphology Traditional studies of morphology recognize that the verbal suffix -ing can form derived nouns as in (4-23) and derived adjectives as in (4-24). These large groups of derived words headed by V-ing have the broad syntactic behavior of nouns and adjectives, rather than of verbs. (4-23) Their early recordings of Bach are much in demand. That artist’s landscape paintings were lost long ago. The frequent wine tastings which they host attract many tourists.

4.3 What is this thing spelled –ing? 

 131

(4-24) We saw a very moving play. How amusing to most of them did the play seem? That interview seemed more revealing than I expected. Many noun properties of derived nominals as in (4-23) are laid out in the classic treatise of Chomsky (1970). For Ns formed from V-ing, they include: (4-25) a.

A range of pre-modifiers of N (Determiners and Quantifiers) are available. b. No aspectual or voice auxiliaries of V are permitted. c. They can be selected by verbs or prepositions that take nominal complements.

These properties of derived nominals are amply exemplified in Chomsky (1970), Grimshaw (1990), and other related works, and are not further illustrated here. There are parallel arguments based on properties of derived adjectives in (4-24). (4-26) a.

A range of pre-modifying grading adverbials typical of A are available (4-27a). b. No aspectual or voice auxiliaries of V are permitted (4-27b). c. They are selected by verbs that take AP complements (4-27c) (Wasow 1977).

(4-27) a. a very moving play, his less caring attitude, a most troubling affair. b. *his getting boring son, *a having failed attempt, *a man being so moved to tears. c. The stunt looked pretty daring. That play remains amusing to children. In both derived nouns and adjectives, this -ing is a word-internal righthand head whose lexical category, N or A, projects upward to become the category of the word, and then of any NP or AP phrase of which this word is the head. As a consequence, the lexical category N or A of this -ing contributes to interpretation (to LF): this head N licenses plurality and modifiers referring to physical properties, and this head A takes grading adverbs and is selected by linking verbs. The internal structures of these lexically stored forms are respectively [N V – N] and [A V – A]. Since the suffix –ing is not productive in these formations, it does not result from its own lexical entry, but is rather specified as a possible word-internal con-

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 4 Polyfunctional –ing: Can any other language match it?

tinuation in specific lexical entries of open class verbs.18 Nouns formed in this way are usually called result nominals, for example in Grimshaw (1990), because they often refer to the physical objects (recording, paintings) produced by the root verbs they derive from.

4.3.2 Productive uses of –ing in derivational morphology There are other uses of derived forms with -ing somewhat different from those in (4-23) and (4-24). They are not well-formed with all pre-modifiers of N and A; nonetheless, these nominals, also of the form [N V –N], still allow compounding freely and some non-verbal modifiers: (4-28) a. Complex Event Nominals (Grimshaw 1990) [DP The final rewritings of the letters] took ages. [DP Such traditional hand-crafting of toys] takes a lot of time. [DP No thoughtless breaking up of such families] can be tolerated. b. Ongoing Action Adjectives (Černá 2016: 76).19 She lost patience with those [AP noisily whining] children. He disliked that course’s [AP very time-consuming] aspects. I hated his [AP most unwelcoming] introductions. According to Grimshaw, in Complex Event Nominals the V root rather than the N suffix selects the complement phrases within the NP. Consequently, when objects of a corresponding lexical V are realized as of-NP, to/ for-NP or in compounds, they receive semantic roles from the V stem, so the V, not the N, is the selecting head at LF. (4-29) V modification within Complex Event Nominals: [DP The last-minute buying of presents for children] was our main activity. [DP Their constant re-branding of that same pesticide] is dishonest. We heard [DP a distant chanting of protestors].

18 How to best formalize lexical entries of open class items and their derived forms is a broad question outside the scope of this work. One approach to the suffixations discussed in this section is presented in Emonds (2005: section 4). 19 This term is from Černá’s study of these adjectives in English and Czech; as a synonym she also uses syntactic verbal adjectives (Černá 2016: 88). Her terms shorten the longer “Active verbal adjectives for present action” used in Dokulil (1986: 321).

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Similarly, attributes of Ongoing Action Adjectives can have the form of A modifiers but have sentence functions determined by the V. (4-30)

V modification within Ongoing Action Adjectives: Families [AP so lacking in resources] shouldn’t move to big cities. The [AP heating up] period in these buses takes too long. His patience seemed [AP fast disapppearing] as his duties expanded.

Thus, the selecting heads in the APs in (4-30) are the root Vs lack, heat and disappear rather than the adjectival suffix –ing.20 In these examples, the actual categories N and A of the suffixes are not inserted until the end of the syntactic derivation of the NP and AP, which lets the V continue to function as the visible head of this phrase prior to such insertion; for details concerning this level of insertion, see Emonds (2000: ch.4). At least for forming Complex Event Nominals, I concur with a conjecture of Anderson (1982) that the suffix –ing is a productive default for Activity verbs. That is, when there is no lexically specified way to form such a nominal in English, –ing is an acceptable last resort: (4-31) Sam quickly sautéed the onions. Sam’s rapid sautéeing of the onions *Sam’s rapid sautée/ sautation/ sautéement/ sautage/ sautéeal of the onions I also agree with the effects of the “Blocking Principle” of Aronoff (1976), by which irregular, non-productive forms, listed in the Open Class Dictionary with the stems that require them, preclude the use of the default. We return to this in discussing lexical economy later in this chapter. Insertion of an independent (productive) morpheme that lacks any purely semantic features, that is, of a closed class item, takes place in general at the end of syntactically deriving a phrase, provided the item is interpreted in Logical Form. That is, a “grammatical noun” with an interpretation is inserted at the end of a bottom-up derivation of an NP; an interpreted grammatical V, such as a minimal activity verb (do so/ do the dishes/ do a job/ do your best) is inserted at the end of deriving the VP.

20 As in (4-29), the underlined modifiers in (i) and (ii) are complements of the Vs restate and consider. (i) Complex Event Nominal: Their frequent restatements of their program are tiring. (ii) Ongoing Action Adjective: How considerate of your needs did the staff act?

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The lexical entry for the productive nominalizing head -ing can be simply stated as in (4-32). Although more research is needed in order to fully justify parallel treatment for Ongoing Action Adjectives, I tentatively formulate it here in parallel with Complex Event Nominals. (4-32) Lexical entries for default derivational suffixes. {N/ A}, , -ing I am assuming that these minimal N and A suffixes, as seen in their underlined uses in (4-29)-(4-30), have minimal nominal and adjectival denotations in LF interpretations. It can be seen from these considerations that the Modern English suffix –ing has four distinct lexical uses even before considering its uses as a traditionally termed inflection that forms invariant participles and gerunds. In both derived nouns and adjectives –ing can be an irregular, item-particular means of forming open class result Ns and fully lexicalized As from Vs, and additionally a productive default way to form Complex Event Nominals and Ongoing Action Adjectives. In these four derivational uses, the category N or A of the suffix plays a role as a head, as expected, in determining both the constructions’ distributions and in licensing their modifiers.

4.3.3 Productive uses of –ing as inflectional morphology In contrast to its just discussed roles in derivational morphology, the inflectional use of -ing in gerunds and participles, exemplified in (4-2), has a more limited effect on the syntax of these mainly verbal constructions. As this chapter and the next show, –ing in NP gerunds determines only that their basic distribution is nominal, and similarly that V-ing participles occur where APs do. Otherwise, the –ing in these consructions does not play the role of a selecting or selected head for material inside the NPs and APs where they occur. The patterns of modifiers within participles and gerunds reproduce instead what is expected of heads that are Vs. As established in Chomsky (1970) for gerunds and in Emonds (1985: ch. 2) for participles, the forms of underlined internal modifiers in (4-33)-(4-34) all require that the head of the bracketed phrases be V, rather than N or A.21

21 For example, if the heads of these phrases were Ns or As, their DP complements would not be bare DPs but would be in of-phrases so as to receive Case from the P of. I return just below to defining the Case Assigner in gerunds and participles.

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(4-33) Gerunds: Mary considered [never spontaneously buying her son a shirt again]. (4-34) Participle: Companies [having opened us up new markets] will be rewarded. The category of the suffix –ing in gerunds like (4-2a)/ (4-33) and participles like (4-2b)/ (4-34) plays no role in licensing internal constituents, and also fails to be interpreted as an N or A. In these constructions, therefore, this N/ A suffix must carry the LF Cancellation Feature Ø (the feature introduced in chapter 1 for Stative Verbs VØ and Realis Mood IØ). That is, in gerunds and participles, the category of the suffix –ing (N or A) is simply uninterpreted. Gerunds are thus instances of a complement whose head is a “canceled” category NØ, and likewise Černá’s Ongoing Action Adjectives are headed by the parallel canceled category AØ. In line with note 21, the case assigning head should be the lexical head of the phrase, as defined in (4-35). (4-35) Definition of Lexical Heads a. If a head Z of a phrase is a lexical category (N, V, A or P), then Z is a lexical head. b. The lexical head of a phrase XP is the highest interpreted lexical head Y0 in XP.22 c. In a gerund or participle, the Case-assigner is the lexical head. Thus in these constructions, V assigns case, rather than the –ing of the uninterpreted suffixes NØ or AØ. To formulate a lexical entry for this inflectional –ing in semi-clauses, I start from a partial parallel with the lexical entry (4-10) for the infinitival to in section 4.2.2. Like the P0 of the infinitival to, the uninterpreted AØ in (4-11) and NØ in (4-12) turn bare VPs into Extended Projections, which can then be selected by higher heads.23

22 One immediate and transparently correct implication of (4-35) is that V is the lexical head of an IP and that N is the lexical head of a DP, even though an IP is not strictly speaking a projection of V, nor is DP a projection of N. 23 Recall, free selection of bare VPs is prevented because they are not Extended Projections (4-20). A tree for participles is just like gerunds (4-36), except that A should replace N.

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(4-36) Gerund Structure: NP NØ Ø

daughter of a selectable EP (=DP) VP

bare VP, not selectable as an EP

needlessly [V delay [NØ ing ] ] the work

It thus appears that inflectional –ing here alternatively realizes the empty NØ sister of VP.24 As is indeed typical in configurations of unmarked AR, the feature’s canonical position is phonetically null, without this needing to be stipulated in the lexicon. The entry for inflectional –ing (4-37) is thus a straightforward instance of AR. (4-37) Lexical entry for gerunds and participles. {NØ/ AØ}, , -ing where -ing alternatively realizes the NØ or AØ sister of VP in (4-11) and (4-12) But now compare this entry for inflectional –ing (4-37) with that of the derivational –ing (4-32) that accounts for the structure of lexical Complex Event Nominals. The two entries can be collapsed by the use of parentheses around Ø. Without the feature Ø, the categories N and A are interpreted in their base positions as minimally contentful heads, while with the feature Ø, these categories NØ and AØ are uninterpreted Alternative Realizations. (4-38) Combined derivational and inflectional -ing: {N(Ø)/ A(Ø)}, , -ing We have arrived at a surprising result. The formal lexical entries for English –ing in both Inflectional NP Gerunds (4-37) and Derived Complex Event Nominals (4-32) have turned out to be nearly identical, and similarly for the entries for –ing for the Inflectional Present Participle and Derived Ongoing Action Adjectives. For simplicity, I discuss this result in more detail for only the more studied nominal constructions. In both nominal structures, the sentence functions and overall interpretations of the sequence of contentful elements, needless – delay – the work, are the same.25 The only difference is the interpreted status of the N –ing. In the gerund (4-36), this –ing is an uninterpreted AR of an NØ sister to a phrasal VP, whereas in the Complex Event Nominal the needless delaying of the work, the N –ing is an interpreted wordinternal N sister to V, with no other interpreted feature. And empirically, the two 24 For the definition and discussion of Alternative Realization, see (1-34) in chapter 1. 25 The morphemes –ly and of are inserted in Phonological Form and are not interpreted.

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constructions are indeed almost perfectly synonymous; the difference is whether the modifying sister of the abstract N is a VP phrase or a simple V (Activity). As these minimally different constructions suggest, in the Complex Event Nominal, the tribute in (4-39a) refers to the manner of playing, and in the gerund (4-39b), the tribute refers to the fact, that is, the performance as a whole. (4-39) a. The careful playing of that sonata was a tribute to her teacher. b. Carefully playing that sonata was a tribute to her teacher. This correlation between the nuances in meaning and the small differences in syntax (placements of the null but interpreted LF head N) confirm that the uses of –ing spell out the same feature. The difference between (4-39a-b) is whether –ing realizes a canonical N on a V-stem, or is an alternative realization of a higher N sister of VP.

4.4 English active participles V+ing: Their distribution and properties I earlier motivated distinct structures for all English semi-clauses: to-infinitives in (4-9), present participles in (4-11), and gerunds in (4-12).26 We will now see how these structures interact with plausible general principles of Syntactic Economy to predict their skewed distributions, whether as subjects, complements or adjuncts. A central part of this analysis will be justifying the conjecture that a minimal variant of a single lexical subcategorization feature +___V is the basis for the lexical selection of all English semi-clause complements.

4.4.1 Where and why economy prefers participles The semi-clause structures of section 4.2 set the stage for exploiting consequences of the Universal Economy Principles, repeated here from chapter 2. It is these Principles that determine the seeming idiosyncratic choices among types of semiclauses, as well as among semi-clauses that are unselected subjects and adjuncts.

26 As seen in section 4.2.1, bare infinitive VPs are complements of only a few verbs, as are also in fact the participles in verbal passives. The restricted distribution of these structures is the subject matter of chapter 6.

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(4-40) Syntactic Economy of Representation (from chapter 2) a. Fewest Phrases. A given XP in LF is to be realized with as few phrases as possible. b. Fewest Words. A given XP in LF is to be realized with as few words as possible. c. Fewest Morphemes. A given X0 in LF is to be realized with as few morphemes as possible. If no other factors were involved (but we will see that they often are), from among the semi-clause structures (4-9), (4-11) and (4-12) Phrasal Economy (4-40a) prefers participles (APs) or subjectless to-infinitives (PPs) to other Extended Projections. Then, for choosing between participle APs and to-infinitive PPs, Word Economy (4-40b) chooses participles as the most economic, because they have a word less than a to-infinitive: (not) using a car vs. to (not) use a car. The most economic way to realize a V-headed clause is thus by using a participle. Let me now enumerate the contexts in which participles in fact occur, at the same time paying attention to the fact that in several other contexts they must cede to gerunds and infinitives. As already seen in section 4.2.3, participles, as we expect from economy, are the semi-clause complements generated by the subcategorization frame +___V with four types of selecting heads: (a) temporal aspect verbs, (b) temporal prepositions, (c) perception verbs, and (d) verbs of apprehension (4-13ad). For clarity, I repeat typical examples of such participle complements: (4-41) a. Temporal aspect verbs: Frank stopped eating such strong cheese. b. Prepositions of time: The child got a shock while turning on the television. c. Transitive verbs of perception: I saw Mary getting blamed during her absence. d. Transitive verbs of “apprehension”: A guard spotted Harry stuffing his pockets. By Minimal Structure (4-6), the V-headed complement chosen by +___V must project to VP, and by the selections allowed in (4-22), this VP must be contained in Extended Projections IP, DP, PP or AP. The structurally most economic of these phrases (4-40a) is AP or PP, and between these, Fewest Words (4-40b) chooses an AP headed by V, that is, the participles as exemplified in (4-41). While AP participles occur as complements and adjuncts, they never occur as subjects, because in general, no APs of any sort can serve as subjects. Otherwise, participles (APs) are the favored type of semi-clause in both complements and adjuncts.

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So what we need to explain is why they so often “lose out” to the less economical gerunds and infinitives. The next section compares present participles and infinitives in adjuncts (where gerunds do not appear), and section 4.4.3 will demonstrate why present participles do not “lose out” in the selected complements types in (4-41). Section 4.6 will introduce a separate syntactic factor that explains why participles, though structurally economical, are in fact rather rarely selected as complements, that is, why participles are far from the universal choice for semi-clause complements.

4.4.2 Participial adjuncts and their infinitival overrides The above reasoning based on Economy explains why present participles are used for adverbial and relative clausal adjuncts as in (4-42). Additionally, these clauses are invariably interpreted as Realis; the semi-clauses in these examples have been chosen because they are difficult to interpret as hypothetical or in the future; these contexts seem to pragmatically require Realis. (4-42)

a.

Adverbial VP modifiers (predicated of subjects): She visited her parents [wondering/ *to wonder if they had enough money]. We said good-bye to John [feeling/ *to feel a bit ill]. We had a bad misunderstanding [talking /*to talk to the neighbors]. b. Reduced relative clauses (adnominal modifiers): Somebody [knowing / *to know the answer] shouted it out. The passengers [having/ * to have two suitcases] should report to the desk. c. Object Complement clauses: John caught his dog [chewing/ *to chew his socks]. We welcomed [the breeze blowing/ *to blow in from the sea].

Infinitives can sometimes replace these types of modifiers, as we will see, but only if an Irrealis interpretation is possible (Čakanyová 2018). As argued in chapter 1, an Irrealis interpretation of a clause results from the category I, so it is natural enough that participles, which lack I, are semantically Realis. Another English participial construction which is Realis is the adverbial absolute (Ishihara 1982), introduced by a semantically empty P with (or idiomatically by what with). In traditional grammar, an absolute is a predication whose relation to the clause containing it is purely pragmatic; the higher modified V is not grammatically related to either the participial V itself or the latter’s subject.

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Temporally, an absolute semi-clause usually holds simultaneously with the proposition in the main clause: (4-43)

We shouldn’t hold this meeting, (what) with John being in New York. (What) With the climate changing so fast, governments are starting to react. With the Gauls having been defeated, Caesar returned to Rome.

As noted in Ishihara’s (1982) study, the behavior of with as an introducer of absolutes is similar to that of for in subjects of infinitives. It is present only if the subject of the participle is overt: (4-44)

(With Harry) Having no income, there’s not much we can do.

In contrast to for-to infinitives, absolute PPs of this sort are found only in adjunct positions, and consist of a subject DP, assigned Case by the semantically empty P with, and a predicate XP which can be an extended projection of any category head. (4-45)

V-head: With him/ her husband to help her out, her business will survive. P-head: With him/ her husband back in New York, she feels lonely. A-head: He felt relieved, with his son safe in his own country. D-head: He is secure now, with his wife a teacher at a good school.

These simultaneously true absolute clause adjuncts are necessarily Realis. As such, they are always expressed in the most economical structure, by AP participles. There are nonetheless several types of English semi-clause adjuncts where to-infinitives optionally or sometimes obligatorily replace participles. (i) Higher purpose clauses (Emonds 2000: section 10.4). Subject-modifying to-infinitives adjoined to a VP are (“higher”) purpose clauses referring to as yet unrealized events: We brought the guest a drink (in order) to thus introduce ourselves. In contrast, unmarked semi-clauses in the same position are again participles and Realis: We brought the guest a drink, thus introducing ourselves. (ii) Lower purpose clauses. Emonds (2000: section 10.4) also discusses some semi-clause secondary predicates modifying their direct object sisters, what can be called lower purpose clauses, are similarly Irrealis and infinitival in form: The landlord sent an agent to pay the rent to. If a participle is used instead, the semi-clause is again Realis: The landlord sent an agent delivering our refund.

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(iii) Infinitival relatives. The infinitival counterparts to relative clauses always indicate an as yet unrealized predicate: The man to fix the sink is now on his way/ arriving. Ordinary reduced relatives with a Realis implication are expressed with structurally more economical participial APs: The man fixing the sink will soon be on his way/ leaving. We see that all the infinitival adjuncts are Irrealis, while the Real adjuncts are realized as AP participles. Adjuncts thus confirm my general hypothesis about the economy of semi-clauses: participles are the preferred unmarked structure; infinitives replace them only when there is an additional explicit expression of Irrealis mood by means of their introductory particle to with the feature DIR, indicating an as yet unattained state.27

4.5 Subjects and the extended projection principle 4.5.1 Structural subjects of semi clauses It has been understood at least since Chomsky (1981) and Koster and May (1982) that verbs need structurally represented subjects in trees, for example to serve as local antecedents of reflexive and reciprocal complements. This condition’s usual name is the Extended Projection Principle (Chomsky 1981: ch. 3). I formulate it as follows. (4-46)

Extended Projection Principle (“EPP”). A verb must have a structural subject phrase if it is a lexical head of a phrasal constituent in LF.

In interpreting the EPP, many syntactic approaches implicitly incorporate a further assumption, to the effect that subject DPs must always enter a derivation inside the smallest clausal domain whose verb assigns it a Theta Role. However, this claim, called the VP-internal subject hypothesis (Zagona 1988), has been motivated mainly by assuming that syntactic structures are similar to representations of propositions in formal logic.28 Some early empirical arguments in its favor were

27 Semi-clause adjuncts introduced by too and enough also specify hypothetical (Irrealis) conditions on an adjectival predication: The steak seemed too rare to enjoy; She needs a table long enough to seat six. This construction is semantically incompatible with the Realis mood of participles. Note that the construction modifies degree words, not the adjectives: *The steak seemed rare to enjoy; *She needs a table long to seat six. 28 This claim, almost universal in recent generative syntax, identifies clausal domains with the “propositions” of predicate calculus, which generally contain an argument corresponding to a

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based on “floating quantifiers”: in The girls have each won a prize, a putative deep subject each the girls inside VP is split and partly raised out of VP by an ad hoc transformation. This same rule supposedly removes all subjects from within most VPs, leaving it its wake only a restricted scattering of quantifiers. Since this rule is quite problematic, I reject it and countenance VP subjects that can originate outside VP, as in the earliest generative treatments.29 Thus, in the structures (4-47), the subject Sue of the underlined AP projections of a participial V is external to them. The smallest clause containing both these VPs and their subject Sue is the main clause, which also includes in bold the selecting head. (4-47)

a. We never hear/ catch [DP Suei] any more [AP [VP talking to herselfi]]. b. [DP Suei] kept on/ resumed [AP [VP talking to herselfi]]. c. [DP Suej] [VP upset Maryi] while [AP [VP talking to herselfj about their mother]].

In these bracketed participle phrases, there is then no interior “small clause domain” that encloses only the participial verb phrase and its subject. These constructions don’t conform to the “VP-internal subject hypothesis,” but have rather VP-external subjects. Nonetheless, by the EPP (4-46), these external subjects are obligatorily structurally present. A position for subjects of participles and bare infinitives, and in fact more generally of all VPs and APs, can be characterized as in (4-48), with no need for additional abstract structure. For clarity I limit the definition of subjects here to verbs. (4-48)

Verbal Subjects: The subject of a V is the lowest projection of D which c-commands some phrasal projection of V within a minimal containing DP or IP.

By inspecting all the uses of participles in (4-41) through (4-47), we can see that (4-48) correctly picks out their subject DPs. This VP-external conception of struc-

grammatical subject. Since predicate calculus is itself based on early logicians’ intuitions (educated guesses) about natural language structures, it is circular to then claim that syntactic structures are improved if they simply formally reproduce these intuitions, with no independent evidence. 29 For example, the rule S → NP – VP, practically emblematic of Chomsky (1957), implies that the NP subject of V is outside VP.

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tural subjects has been available since first suggested in Jackendoff (1972), but has generally been ignored or rejected without argument, in favor of representations containing redundant empty subjects of “obligatory control” inside all semi-clauses. I claim that these latter empty DPs are unneeded in participles and bare infinitives.30 One main role of grammatical relations such as “subject” is specifying which structural constituents a lexical head should assign its semantic roles to, also known as “Theta Roles” such as Agent, Experiencer, Theme, etc. (Jackendoff 1972). In my view, one of the most perceptive of such interpretive principles, involving subjects, the Theta Role “Agent” and the feature Activity, is Chomsky’s (4-49). Note that the rule is, as I think all such rules should be, a rule of interpretation leading from narrow syntax to LF.31 (4-49)

Agent Specification. “Thus one rule (probably universal) will stipulate that for verbs of action [all but Stative VØ, JE], the animate subject may be interpreted as the agent.” (Chomsky 1972: 75).

Thus, whenever a non-stative verb is inserted into a syntactic derivation, its Animate Subject DP (4-48) can be an Agent (and thereby satisfy Full Interpretation at LF). In what follows, it will be useful to have a cover term for all the relations in which a lexical head X assigns a Theta Role to a phrase YP. (4-50) Definition of Theta-Relatedness. If a lexical head X0 assigns a Theta Role to a phrase YP, we say that X0 and Y0 (the heads of XP and YP) are Theta-Related. For exposition, I am assuming that DP arguments of a V rather than the NPs inside them receive Theta Roles, although it is the lexical head N (X0) of DP that is

30 As for defining overt subjects of English APs, such as John in They considered John clever, Verbal Subjects can easily be extended to cover them. Consider assigns a predicate interpretation to an AP complement, but no role to its other subcategorized XP. This DP complement must receive a Theta Role as the subject of clever in order to satisfy Full Interpretation. 31 Agent Specification is not some kind of linking rule leading from semantic lexical representations such as “theta grids” or “argument structures” to syntactic structure. It works in the opposite direction. As argued in detail in Emonds (1991b), there are no such devices of “deep semantics” that account for syntax. It is rather the other way around, as in Chomsky (1957: ch. 7): abstract but motivated syntactic structures shed light on/ determine interpretation, e.g. assignment of Theta Roles.

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Theta-Related to V (Y0). Thus, if DP is a (non-expletive) subject of a VP, then the pair {V. N} is an instance of Theta-Relatedness. As defined above, Theta-Relatedness is an unordered and algebraically symmetric relation between X and Y.

4.5.2 Internal subjects of gerunds For gerunds, in contrast to participles, I have adopted a structure empirically justified in Wasow and Roeper (1972), which in gerunds does give rise to subject DPs internal to the semi-clauses. For ease of reference, the gerund structure (4-12) is repeated below, with an additional position for a Specifier of D; such Specifiers in English are formally possessive DPs (Stowell 1981). The internal subject of the gerundive VP is thus obligatorily inside DP; by the formulation of Verbal Subjects (4-48), a subject DP must be “the lowest c-commanding DP within a minimal containing DP or PP”. For at least today’s older speakers of English, including the author, such internal subjects of gerunds can be overt in most positions of DPs and also realized with or without the possessive ʼs in D. (Many younger speakers have indicated to me that they understand overt subjects in gerunds, but that speakers their age don’t use them).32 Internal Subject in the structure of Gerunds: (4-51)

This kind of structure, in which a DP subject can be either lexical or an empty anaphor, is called “optional control”: She is not happy about (the company(’s)) delaying the work.

32 Several authors assume that this structure for gerunds with optional ’s is conflating two different structures. I really doubt this, though the –s may be associated with some stylistic choice of register or formality. In any case, this work treats this case-marking as an optional variant that does not affect truth conditions.

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As for how to select gerunds with the different types of control (for speakers which can have both), I cannot for the moment point to any independent factor that can fully predict when it is possible. (For relevant and promising discussion, see Wurmbrand 2002.) Consequently, I lexically specify transitive obligatory control verbs such as avoid and undertake as V, +__V (section 4.6 will show why this doesn’t invariably lead to participles), while optional control verbs such as criticize and describe are listed with a marked frame as V, +__(D)^V, which licenses an optional overt subject in SPEC(D). (4-52) a.

b.

We should avoid/ undertake (*our teenagers) buying expensive bicycles. It is (*our teenagers) buying expensive bicycles that we must avoid/ undertake. They criticized/ described (their son) repairing old cars. It was their son repairing old cars that they criticized/ described.

This study’s general approach is thus that the minimal realizations of the simple frame +___V are participles and obligatory control gerunds, and that unpredictable deviations in semi-clause selection, such as an optional overt DP in SPEC(DP), result from minimal stipulated additions to the basic frame. I know of no other approach to selection and control that predicts the contrast in (4-52a-b) without such stipulation.

4.5.3 Internal subjects of infinitives As for English to-infinitives, their internal structural subjects can also sometimes express either obligatory or optional control. Their required structural subject (satisfying the EPP) is in SPEC(PP) (4-53). In obligatory control, this DP is empty. An optional control structure is formed by embedding a to-infinitive as a sister of a P headed by the non-locational GOAL preposition for, as in (4-53).33

33 The non-synonymous prepositions to and for must of course spell out different features, even though they share some syntax. For instance, their DP objects can both be paraphrased in double objects without a P: they brought War and Peace to me/ they brought me War and Peace and they bought War and Peace for me/ they bought me War and Peace. The locational sense of for focuses more on “direction toward” (GOAL) than on reaching a destination. Compare He went for the next question with He went to the next question, and They headed for the national park with They headed to the national park.

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Internal Subjects in Infinitives using for-to PP PØ, GOAL for

PP SPEC, DP the company

PØ, DIR to

VP delay the work

In one use (4-54a), a non-locational for introducing a clause is interpreted like its simple transitive counterpart in P-DP (both for are non-locational PØ). In another use (4-54b), the P with a clausal sister seems to lack any semantics and doesn’t alternate with for-DP. (For a full range of structures available inside PP, see Jackendoff 1973.) (4-54)

a.

b.

Non-locational GOAL interpretation; for takes either infinitives or DPs: Jim waited for the landlord (to come to the house). The management is arranging for { the offices to be moved/ the big move }. We hope for { her to return soon// her quick return }. No GOAL interpretation; for cannot have a DP object: Jim would hate { for the landlord to arrive/ * for the landlord’s arrival }. The employees preferred { for the meeting to be later/ *for a later meeting }. We intend { for her to return soon/ *for her quick return }.

The features selecting infinitives of obligatory control seems thus to be V, +__ V and V,+__GOAL^V, while optional control results from additionally selecting a DP: V, +__GOAL^D^V. In standard English dialects, the overt allomorph for of GOAL appears only in front of an overt DP: I would hate (*for) to lose; Bill did that (*for) to get even. The alternative feature V, +__(D)^V may be the basis of I would hate Bill to lose. Many treatments of English for-to clauses have assigned them a structure similar to embedded finite clauses, namely “COMP – IP” rather than the “P – PP” here. The only motivation for this extension of IP is their similar interpretations, in particular when IP is Irrealis. But by removing the two uninterpreted PØ in (4-53), we obtain the LF structure (4-55a), which is close to the LF of a finite clause with a Modal (4-55b). (4-55) a.

V – [(GOAL) – [DP – DIR – VP]]; DIR = unattained state plan for Mary to get a new office

4.5 Subjects and the extended projection principle 

 147

b. V – [COMP – [DP – IRREALIS – VP]] plan that Mary will/ should get a new office In light of the discussion in section 4.2.2 on the apparent relatedness of DIR and IRREALIS, these similar structures suffice to account for their similar interpretations. There is no other reason to place for in the category COMP or to in the category I (Cf. Čakanyová 2018: ch. 2; to lacks the NICE properties). Consequently, I maintain that the structure of a for-to infinitive is that of (4-53).34

4.5.4 Status of the small clause hypothesis A standard clause has been defined in chapter 1 as a phrase IP which immediately dominates a subject DP, and also dominates an I and a predicate phrase XP.35 A question now arises, in a constituent dominating a subject and its predicate, can a third constituent (like those underlined below) of such a phrase precede the subject, yielding IP complements like (we know) that Mary must like John or (I wonder) how often Mary sees John? There is no real evidence that the IP complements in these examples exclude that and how often. If so, even a standard clause in English need not begin with its subject and can contain initial constituents in addition to the subject and the predicate. Nonetheless, there are instances of English clauses that must begin with their subject DP. As we have seen, gerunds, in particular those with overt subjects, are among them. Such clauses, beginning with their subject and not projections of I, have been named “small clauses” and first investigated in Williams (1975). A number of authors, notably Stowell (1981) have subsequently proposed that all English semi-clauses and embedded predicates of other categories (APs and PPs) are small clauses “SC”; we can call this the “Small Clause Hypothesis.” In the following examples, the SCH claims that the underlined DPs are subjects of bracketed SCs and inside them:

34 In the next chapters, to keep straight the difference between PPs containing DP objects and PPs as in (4-53) which dominate a verbal clause, I use the label CP for the latter, which corresponds to the notation familiar from current syntactic literature. 35 In English and French, only a VP can follow I. Descartes was aware that subjects and predicates can be joined by a third element, which he named the copula. The latter’s only meaning for him was this joining, hence the name for is, are, etc. This grounds in semantics and logic the categorical status. of the syntactic category I, discovered in chapter 1 using empirical patterns.

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 4 Polyfunctional –ing: Can any other language match it?

(4-56) Maryi believed/ judged [heri pupils / * Øi ready to perform].\ Maryi got/ felt [heri pupils/ Øi ready to perform]. Maryi remained/ looked [*heri pupils/ Øi ready to perform]. There are several long unsolved problems with the SCH. One seen in the above examples is that individual verbs seem to unpredictably case-mark, optionally case-mark, or fail to case-mark, and in this way license (or not), the embedded subjects of their SC complements. Despite decades of adherence to the SCH, I am not aware that its advocates have made any serious progress in this area. Moreover, overt subjects of small clauses do not reduce to part of transitivity. (4-57) a.

The girl tasted the meat. The meat tasted salty. *The girl tasted the meat salty. b. *The boy thought the new story. *The new story thought improbable. The boy thought the new story improbable.

The variations in overt “small clause subjects” seen in (4-56)-(4-57) are more like those seen in complement selection (subcategorization) by different verbs, and when treated as such, they render superfluous the added phrasal structure imposed by the SCH. Additionally, the many works incorporating the SCH have never pinpointed what actual categories SCs are in. Nor has any justification been given for the fact that SCs containing overt subjects never move, for example to any focus or topicalized position (Haegeman 1991). Nor do they, unlike other clausal boundaries, block any case-marking by the lexical items that select them. For these reasons, I discard the SCH entirely.

4.6 Theta relatedness and the anti-transitivity criterion There should be some reason for why a good number of semi-clauses, such as gerunds and for-to clauses, have internal DP subjects, while for many others, as we now will see, the subject of the semi-clause is structurally located in the next higher clause and often a DP argument of the latter’s head. Answering this question leads at the same time to understanding why (and when) participles are often not the “favored” non-finite English construction.

4.6 Theta relatedness and the anti-transitivity criterion 

 149

To do this, we need to start with a sharpened understanding of the EPP (4-46). The first step is to better appreciate the architecture of grammatical relations in those structures where participles are available, namely: (4-58) as complements of temporal aspect verbs, prepositions of time, transitive verbs of perception, and transitive verbs of “apprehension”, as listed in (4-41).36 (4-59) as adjuncts of three types: VP-modifying adverbials (4-42a), reduced relative clauses (4-42b), and absolute clauses (4-43). In all these seven structures, three lexical heads are crucially involved: (4-60) Theta-Related Heads in Participial Constructions (i) A higher V or N head, here called X, modified by the participle. (ii) The participial head V of the semi-clause, here called Y. (iii) The subject N of the participle, here called Z. The key to understanding where participial constructions can occur is to see that all of them involve some kind of restriction on the Theta-Relatedness of their heads. By definition, an adjunct constituent is a phrasal modifier YP that is not lexically selected by a head X, so the X and Y in (4-60) are not Theta-Related – the crucial concept defined in (4-50) – in any of the adjunct constructions. In the two adjunct structures (4-42a-b), though the main and subordinate verbs share a subject, they are not themselves Theta-Related because main verbs never assign Theta Roles to adjuncts.37 This holds as well for absolute clauses as in (4-43). Restrictions on Theta-Relatedness also hold for participial complements: – In the temporal adverbial clauses, with Ps of time, (4-41b), the participial V is selected by (= Theta-Related to) the introductory P, not by the main V it modifies. – In object complement clauses with “apprehension” verbs, (4-41d), the participial V is not Theta-Related to the main V either. Its semantic function as “object complement” is rather to specify further information about the direct object. 36 For concrete examples, consult again the four complement configurations in (4-41). 37 Throughout this work, complements are defined by subcategorization and adjuncts by modifiers that are not subcategorized. Other authors use the term adjunct in different ways, sometimes even for obligatorily subcategorized PPs after verbs like put and hand. The argument here is based on consistent usage and not on the variations in the literature.

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 4 Polyfunctional –ing: Can any other language match it?

Thus, in five of the seven uses of English participles, the head of the higher construction X (4-60i) is not Theta-Related to the participial verb Y (4-60ii). Consider next the two remaining classes of participial complements: those of temporal aspect verbs in (4-41a) and of perception verbs in (4-41c): (4-41) a. (4-41) c.

Frank stopped eating such strong cheese. I saw Mary getting blamed during her absence.

In both these configurations, the bold main verbs (X) are not Theta-Related to the underlined subjects of the participles (Z) in (4-60). The following generalization (Emonds 1985: ch. 2) thus unites all uses of English participles. (4-61) Anti-transitivity. Theta-Relatedness (4-50) is an anti-transitive relation. As in algebra, a symmetric relation R among members of a set is defined as “anti-transitive” if and only if, for any members of the set, XRY and YRZ implies ~XRZ. Thus, if the pairs X, Y and Y, Z are in a certain relation, then X and Z cannot be in the same relation.38 If two heads of a participial construction as in (4-60) are Theta-Related and a second pair are also Theta-Related, then the third pair cannot be Theta-Related.

4.6.1 Structural examples of anti-transitivity The following schematic trees show how Anti-transitivity of Theta Role Assignment is fully respected in all English active participle complements. These trees illustrate this for the four constructions in (4-41). (4-62) Theta-Relatedness in English Participles (underlined). “Theta Related” is represented by broken lines: – - -. “Not Theta Related” is represented by by ___||___.

38 E.g, among the positive integers, if j is an immediate successor of i and k of j, then k is not an immediate successor of i. So the “immediate successor” relation is anti-transitive.

4.6 Theta relatedness and the anti-transitivity criterion 

 151

a. Temporal Aspect Verb Vm: Frank stopped eating such strong cheese. IP DP N

VP ____||_______ V

Frank

AP

m

stopped

[ A Ø]

VP

[V eat]-ing such strong cheese b. Adverb clause modifies Vm: A kid got a shock while turning on the television. IP VP DP

VP

N

PP ||

Vm

A kid

P

AP [ A Ø]

got a shock while

VP [ V turn]-ing on the television

c. Perception Verb Vm I saw Mary getting blamed during her absence. VP DP Vm saw

||

N

AP [A Ø]

Mary

VP [V get]-ing blamed during her absence

d. Apprehension Verb Vm:: A guard spotted Harry planning his crime. VP DP Vm spotted

N Harry

AP [A Ø] ||

VP [V plan]-ing his crime

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 4 Polyfunctional –ing: Can any other language match it?

For the adjunct constructions Anti-transitivity is transparent, since heads of adjuncts are never Theta-Related to any head in the larger clause/ phrase that they modify.39

4.6.2 Larger structures required by anti-transitivity In the Government and Binding framework, a principle called the Theta Criterion was supposed to regulate tree size with respect to whether a given DP could receive semantic roles from more than one predicate. The fact that two versions of this Criterion in Chomsky (1981: 36, 335) are inconsistent and that both are arguably misformulated (Emonds 2000: ch. 2) has generally been overlooked.40 What I call Anti-transitivity here, also called the Revised Theta Criterion in Emonds (1985), is a proposal for retaining a needed part of the Criterion while discarding the residue. As argued there, temporal aspect verbs as in (4-41a) assign no Theta Role to their subject (for a defense of this, see Garcia 1967). Similarly, perception verbs with semi-clause complements assign no Theta Role to their direct object; what is “perceived” is the verbal action, and only incidentally can include the direct object. For example, in (4-41c), Mary herself is not seen. Yet in both (4-41a and c), these main clause DPs are simultaneously the subjects of the embedded semiclause complements and so Theta-Related to them. Thus, even though both perception verbs in (4-41c) (hear, see, watch etc.) and verbs of apprehension in (4-41d) (find, catch, spot, etc.) select two syntactic complements, each type of verb assigns a Theta Role to only one of them. So in these cases, the main V itself is either not Theta-Related to its object (4-41c) or not Theta-Related to its participial complement (4-41d), and Anti-Transitivity is respected. What emerges from scrutinizing these examples is that in all seven English participial structures in (4-41) and (4-42), as well as in absolute clauses (4-43), 39 A number of studies have invoked ad hoc devices in order to avoid the ternary branching of early generative grammar such as (4-62c-d) These moves are motivated by an a priori commitment to binary branching trees (Kayne 1994). For example, subject-predicate pairs are defined as requiring “mutual c-command” instead of the more justified simple c-command by the subject, and trees contain any number of “small clauses.” As observed in section 4.5.4, these small clauses never satisfy phrasal diagnostics. Related ideas include ungoverned categories and null case. The fact is, one of these constructs interact with English verbal morphology, and hence are not supported by it either. For discussion of the history of structurally identifying clauses and logical propositions, see Emonds (2007: ch. 1). 40 For discussion of the inconsistencies, see Emonds (1985: ch, 2).

4.6 Theta relatedness and the anti-transitivity criterion 

 153

the three lexical heads identified as X, Y, Z in (4-60) are (i) a higher V, N or P, (ii) a lower V, and (iii) the latter’s subject N. By Anti-transitivity (4-61), a structure is well-formed only if some pair in each of these triplets is not Theta-Related. We have seen that this holds in all participial structures in English (eight if we count absolutes); all satisfy Anti-transitivity. When we look beyond the configurations where participles can occur, Anti-transitivity still holds, but has quite different implications; it excludes structures rather than allows them. This principle can explain why participles are not allowed in several structural configurations, although Economy alone would predict that they are preferred. To see this, let us inspect more triplets of Theta-Related heads as specified in (4-60), which contain a higher verb X (underlined), a lower semi-clause which is its complement Y (in bold), and a bold underlined DP (Z) which might be thought to receive a Theta Role from both verbs. If such instances of Theta-Relatedness are constructed, these examples all violate Anti-transitivity. (4-63)

*John told/ urged my cousins consulting with each other. * They decided moving away. * The neighbors reminded Sam having promised a loan.

Anti-transitivity explains directly why these complement configurations are illformed. In order to make them well-formed, some structure larger than a participle (an AP) must be used to ensure that the direct object/ subject DPs of the main verb, which assign a Theta Role to its semi-clause complement, are not also the subjects of (that is, Theta-Related to) the subordinate verbs. If they were, Anti-transitivity would be violated. In (4-64), the ungrammatical participles of (4-63) are replaced by infinitives and gerunds. In (4-64a-b), infinitivals containing obligatorily controlled lower subjects, notated Øi, mean that no main clause DP is simultaneously also related to the subordinate verb. In (4-64c), the same function is fulfilled by the internal empty subject of the gerund object of a selected P of. (4-64) a. b. c.

John told/ urged my cousinsi [PP [DP Øi] to [VP consult with each otheri]]. Theyi decided [PP [DP Øi] to [VP move away]]. The neighbours reminded Sami of [DP [DP Øi] [NP having promised a loan]].

Example (4-64c) also shows another way that gerunds are larger than participles, since contentless case-assigning Ps such as of never introduce participles.

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 4 Polyfunctional –ing: Can any other language match it?

4.7 Conclusion: The role of participles and gerunds in grammar We now know why some but not all selected Vs project to only a participial AP rather than to an infinitival PP or gerundive DP. Economy of Representation (4-40), in searching for Extended Projections for satisfying the frame +___V, compares a DP gerund or a PP infinitive with an AP participle as candidates. If Anti-transitivity is respected, it prefers AP structures with external subjects to either gerundive DPs or infinitival PPs with internal subjects, because the AP has less phrasal structure. The situations where participles are not chosen are thus brought about by two factors. One is Anti-Transitivity; if this is violated, a more complex structure is needed to satisfy the frame +__V, namely, one where a semi-clause has an internal subject; this removes the violation, yielding a gerund. A second factor that can override the preference for participles is when a selected complement needs a feature expressing Irrealis, which in semi-clauses is the DIR feature on infinitival to. For adjuncts, an infinitival structure also has a DIR (Irrealis-like) feature on P. When this is absent, the participle is again favored as the most economic structure realizing a V-headed Realis adjunct. A participle V+ing is therefore the basic English semi-clause without an overt subject. It is never necessary to stipulate separately in its lexicon or particular grammar that a participle, a gerund or an infinitive may or may not occur in some configuration. Principles of Universal Grammar, namely the Economy Principles and Anti-transitivity, work in tandem and entirely predict their distinct distributions and properties.41 This chapter has motivated structures for four types of English semi-clauses, none of which consist of full (finite) IPs based on VPs: bare VPs, active AP participles, NP gerunds, and to-infinitives. It has examined all aspects of the active participles, arguing that they are structurally the most economic Extended Projections, either complements selected by a subcategorization frame +___V or adjuncts of both Vs and Ns occurring as unselected Realis adjunct predicates. 41 There are apparent cases where two complements of a verb both receive Theta Roles from it, and where the first (direct object) is the subject of the other (a PP of location), as in put the cat in the yard. If this were the full story, it would violate Anti-transitivity (4-61). However, closer examination of relevant paradigms (Emonds 2007: ch. 4) suggests that whenever two non-clausal complements receive Theta Roles, then the second Theta Role is assigned to a (sometimes covert) intermediate P of PATH (to, from), whose complement is in turn a PP of PLACE. This is seen in for example, We took the cat (from) [PP behind the barn]. Within this structure, the PP of PLACE is unrelated to V, but is predicated of the direct object. This constellation of four heads (V, an object D, a P of PATH and a P of PLACE) fully respects Anti-transitivity.

4.7 Conclusion: The role of participles and gerunds in grammar 

 155

It  has also shown how their inflectional head V+ing is related on one side to certain more nominal phrases, the complex event nominals with interpreted head Ns of the same form, and on the other side to larger semi-clauses containing internal DP subjects, overt or covert; that is, DP gerunds and PP infinitivals. The chapter has furthermore developed a proposal that grammatical theory can predict, without lexical stipulation, when the contextual feature +__V selects these larger clauses instead of the participles.42 To support this, I have argued that the assignment of a Theta Role by a head, here termed “Theta-Relatedness”, is subject to a previously unacknowledged structural condition of Anti-transitivity. Because of this general restriction on interpretation in Universal Grammar, participles, shown on independent grounds to lack internal subjects, cannot always satisfy a frame calling for a V-headed complement. In these cases, the lexical selection feature +__V must be satisfied by larger semi-clauses, gerunds or infinitives. These are the topic of the next chapter.

42 Approaches which claim that APs have the same internal phrasal structure as DPs (for instance, that APs are small clauses with internal subjects) cannot explain why AP participles are preferred to identically sized DP gerunds. Such approaches must ultimately differentiate and select various non-finite clauses with arbitrary diacritics, a return to Rosenbaum (1967), which the language-learner must decipher for every verb, even though English participles and gerunds consist of the same terminal strings. Such analyses must also invent mechanisms to explain why AP small clauses with null subjects can be a focus in pseudo-clefts like other XP (i), while those with overt subjects cannot (ii): (i) Mary felt guilty. (ii) Mary considered Bill honest.

What Mary felt was guilty. *What Mary considered was Bill honest.

This asymmetry cannot be due to failure of case-marking in focus position, as (iii) shows: (iii) Mary considered a small school.

What Mary considered was a small school.

5 Gerunds vs. infinitives: Less alike than they look We have so far not investigated the sharp empirical differences between these two constructions, or why in so many contexts one but not the other is allowed: (5-1) a.

They discussed visiting Mexico/ *to visit Mexico. They discussed when to visit Mexico/ *when visiting Mexico. b. Julie described how to find a hotel/ *how finding a hotel. Julie described finding a hotel/ *to find a hotel.

As such contrasts show, contrary to what has generally been assumed, it is not simply a case of given predicates selecting either gerunds or infinitives, or occasionally both. Their distributions are determined rather by the interplay of several syntactic principles, each in themselves rather simple, but complex in their combined effects. The factors and principles that predict the distributions of gerunds and infinitives, including contexts where both seem acceptable, are the subject matter of this chapter. In particular, these predictions will further utilize the Economy Principles (4-40a-c). We will see that when participle semi-clauses are ruled out, gerunds and to-infinitives are not equal alternatives. Rather, since gerunds are built around a bound morpheme –ing and infinitives around the free morpheme to, Fewest Words (4-40b) prefers gerunds. It is thus the task of this chapter to explain why in so many cases, infinitives still win out, so much so that both traditional and generative grammars, almost without exception, consider them to be the most “normal” or unmarked type of English semi-clause, and focus more on them than the other types. Almost all approaches have taken gerunds to be “more special”, probably because several similar languages (e.g. French and German) lack them. As we will see, such a conception seriously misrepresents the morphosyntax of current English grammar. The frequency of semi-clauses based on –ing is in fact the natural result of their more economical structural status. The preceding chapter started our exploration of English non-finite clauses (semi-clauses). It argued that their lexical head is always V (and that they contain no I), and that depending on Principles of Economy and other syntactic factors, bare VPs (section 4.2.1) must generally project further to Extended Projections,

Note: I thank Mchaela Čakanyová and Kateřina Havranová for carefully reading the material in this chapter and for several helpful suggestions. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110734379-006

5.1 Differences between gerunds and infinitives 

 157

either participles (APs), gerunds (DPs), or infinitives (PPs).1 The most economic of these are participles, which lack internal subjects (section 4.4). However. section 4.6 showed that another factor, Anti-Transitivity of Theta Relations, forces gerunds and infinitives to have internal subjects. Precisely because of this latter factor, most English semi-clauses (be they subjects, objects or complements) must have subject phrase DPs internal to the semiclause (section 4.5). That is, these gerunds or to-infinitives have full structures as in (5-2)-(5-3), which repeat those justified in chapter 4. Internal DP subjects, needed to satisfy both the Extended Projection Principle (section 4.5) and Anti-Transitivity, are in the SPEC positions of their Extended Projections, and not external to them. (5-2)

Internal Structure of Gerunds: cf. (4-12):

(5-3)

Structure of to-Infinitives, cf. (4-53):

In terms of Phrasal Economy, these two structures are equal, but in terms of Word Economy, gerunds (5-2) are preferred.

5.1 Differences between gerunds and infinitives English gerunds and infinitives are often treated as virtually interchangeable, or at least as highly similar ways to use VPs as subjects or objects selected by categories such as V and P. However, a closer look at the grammatical patterns of these

1 Or a VP can project to IP (ch. 1), in which case it becomes of course a finite clause.

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 5 Gerunds vs. infinitives: Less alike than they look

two constructions shows that they have sharply different distributions, and that furthermore their internal structures are also quite distinct. Like typical subjects and objects, gerunds appear in DP positions, but infinitives and finite clauses – grouped together under the term “verbal clauses” in this study – do not. Superficially the latter may seem to be in subject or object positions, but various diagnostic tests show that these clausal types, both finite and infinitival, merge into larger structures differently than do DPs, in ways that clearly distinguish them from sometimes nearly synonymous gerunds.

5.1.1 The DP structure of gerunds This chapter will empirically demonstrate that gerunds, in accord with their structure (5-2) and unlike infinitives, systematically occur in noun phrase (DP) positions, and nowhere else. An important initial indicator of this is that speakers who allow overt subjects in gerunds2 can mark this subject with the phrasal suffix ’s, whose only regular use is to signal possessive nominal phrases inside DPs. This morphology therefore suggests that gerunds are VPs functioning as NPs in extended DPs as in (5-4), and that the DP in the SPEC position is the gerund’s internal subject.3 (5-4)

John’s not doing the laundry (surprises me). DP SPEC, DP John

(= lowest extended projection containing the VP)

DØ ’s/ Ø

NP VP

NØ Ø

V not [V do ] [ N ing ]

DP the laundry

Certain other gerund complements disallow overt subjects in any dialect; those are generally said to exhibit “obligatory control” in their null subject position:

2 Many younger speakers of current English do not produce overt subjects in gerunds, but Standard English speakers born by 1960 usuallly consider them acceptable. 3 The analysis of the English possessive marker –s as the head D is from Stowell (1981). Inside a gerund, the empty nominal head is an N alternatively realized under V as –ing rather than a lexical noun such as fact, event, idea, etc.

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 159

(5-5) The principal neglected [DP [DP Øi / *his school’s] [D Ø] [NP cleaning up]]. Everybody undertook [DP [DP Øi/ *their kids’] [D Ø] [NP planting some trees]]. Billi is limited to [DP [DP Øi / *his brother’s [D Ø] [NP having two meals a day]]. Nonetheless, there is evidence that DP subjects of gerunds as in (5-4) and (5-5) are obligatorily present, even if null. Consider for instance the presence of a reflexive pronoun in Keeping oneself/ herself out of debt struck me as sensible. The gerunds must include a covert subject to serve as the obligatorily clause-internal antecedent of the reflexive pronoun object, as convincingly argued for in Wasow and Roeper (1972). A central question concerns how gerunds, which are internally structured like VPs, end up inside DPs with the distribution of NPs. The fact is, gerunds are nothing more than shorthand for using a given predicate VP in an NP position. So the gerundive inflection –ing simply reflects the obligatory N head of a DP. As discussed in section 4.3.3, the –ing in (5-4) alternatively realizes this N on the head of its sister VP. Because no specifically nominal interpretation is associated with the gerund per se, the –ing in (5-4) seems to be an instance of the LF Cancellation Feature Ø of chapter 1. Recall that the feature Ø can be associated with any X0 category, and functions to remove that category’s usual Logical Form content.4 That is, the category NØ in (5-4) cancels the minimal nominal interpretation (number and gender features). This NØ is realized (spelled out as -ing) under the head of N’s VP sister in (5-8), exactly as required by the formulation of Alternative Realization in chapter 1. There are two ways the possessive DP inside (5-4) can be interpreted. Due to Anti-transitivity, it can be co-referential with a DP argument of the higher head which selects it, as in (5-6). Alternatively, if this possessive DP is free, either lexical or null, the null variant can exhibit so called “Arbitrary Control” where it is a pragmatically animate proform, similar to the Animate pronoun one. The usual symbol for this null subject of semi-clauses is PRO. (5-6) In PRO selecting a used car, the state of the brakes is important. PRO Knowing how to parallel park is often essential. It is better PRO to give advice without PRO being arrogant. The reference of this Animate Arbitrarily Controlled DP subject of both gerunds and infinitives (see section 5.1.3) seems determined by pragmatics, not syntax.

4 In chapter 1, all Stative (non-Activity) verbs were notated as VØ and Realis I (finite inflections) as IØ.

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5.1.2 The PP structure of infinitives For infinitives, we have found (section 4.5.3) that they also have a structural subject DP which can be overt or empty. The influential paper of Koster and May (1982) argues that such structural subject DPs are obligatory. The combined effect of the Wasow and Roeper (1972) study of gerunds and the Koster and May (1982) study of infinitives, together with English patterns of “expletive” pronoun subjects (= meaningless placeholders required by syntax, as in I’m afraid of *(its) raining today/ of *(there) being a storm soon), is to justify Chomsky’s (1981, 2000) Extended Projection Principle. For convenience, its formulation is repeated from section 4.5. (5-7) Extended Projection Principle (EPP). A verb must have a structural subject phrase if it is a lexical head of a phrasal constituent in LF. The structural subject DPs of both gerunds and infinitives satisfy this condition, even if these DPs are semantically null (expletives) or phonetically null (in obligatory control, imperative clauses, traces of WH-movement, etc.). For English to-infinitives, chapter 4 has argued that the tree in (5-8) below is the structural counterpart of the gerund (5-4). As with the ʼs in gerunds, a surface Preposition for, whose role is often to simply assign Case to the infinitive’s subject, is overt only if this subject DP is as well. (5-8) For him/ For her husband to introduce himself would embarrass Susan. (*For) To introduce herself would embarrass Susan. PP PØ , GOAL

PP DP

PØ , DIR

VP

V for/* Ø Ø/*for

him/ her husband Ø

DP

to introduce

himself

to introduce

herself

When the subject DP is null and for absent, Economy rules out the higher PP. Such for-to infinitive clauses are used very generally in a full range of grammatical relations (Čakanyová 2018: ch. 4): – as clausal subjects: It would be unusual for him to introduce himself.

5.1 Differences between gerunds and infinitives 

– – –

 161

as adverbial and relative clause adjuncts: (in order) for DP to VP: They sacrificed a lot for you to have a better life; He is the man for us to hire; as unembedded “root” clause wishes: Oh, for us to be in Paris again! as selected complements to certain verb classes: arrange, beg, hope, long, plan (the preceding verbs also select for-DP); hate, intend, like, prefer, want.

The widespread use of for-to clauses is thus a sort of hallmark of English semiclauses, setting this language apart from many of its close Indo-European relatives.5 Since adjuncts and subjects are not selected by lexical entries (Chomsky 1965: ch. 2), Economy doesn’t come into play; as a result, their subjects can generally be overt. (5-9)

Optionally overt subjects of adjunct clauses We brought the guests a drink, in order (for them) to feel comfortable. The landlord sent an agent (for us) to pay the rent to. The man (for Dorothy) to talk to about the sink is on his way.

(5-10) Optionally overt subjects of subject clauses It would be unusual (for you) to have scheduling difficulties. (For Bill) to admit his guilt might be unwise.

5.1.3 The minimal VPs of control and raising Besides adjunct and subject infinitives with overt for-DP subjects, some infinitives consist of only the PP headed by to, and these can also be subjects, adjuncts or complements. By the EPP such infinitives must have (possibly covert) DP subjects, either external or internal: (5-11)

A subject of PP infinitives can be: a. a DP in a higher clause, but not separated from VP by a DP or IP boundary. b. a DP inside the same PP in Specifier position.

5 As Čakanyová (2018: ch. 4) shows, to is obligatory with all infinitives used as topicalized subjects, adjuncts, or complements of any N, A, or P. To is obligatory even with infinitival complements to V, except after a few (frequently used) closed class active verbs: go, come, see, hear, make, have and let. See section 4.2.1.

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The case (5-11a) is more economical since it involves fewer phrases; the subject DP is independently required in the higher clause. One place where this can occur is when the Anti-transitivity of section 4.6 excludes a participle, as in (5-12a-b). (5-12)

Higher subjects of minimal PP infinitives a. The father persuaded/ told the child (Øi/ *for his sister) to be more careful. b. The boy decided/ promised his father (Øi/ *for his sister) to take fewer risks. c. Mary insulted John (in order) to get even for his behavior. d. Susan seemed tall enough to Bill to reach the bulb.

In all these infinitives, Verbal Subjects (4-48) determines which higher DP is also the subject of the infinitive: for a complement, the direct object if there is one, or lacking that, the subject.6 A second configuration is when an adjunct to VP, bold in (5-12c-d), has an understood subject; only the main clause subject c-commands the adjunct and can therefore serve as its subject as well. Rosenbaum (1967) and Government and Binding analyses which explicitly or implicitly follow his system propose that the null subject DPs of the embedded clauses in (5-12) are co-referential with (controlled by) the underlined DPs because of a special “Minimal Distance Principle”. This principle is subsumed in the present framework under the definition of Verbal Subjects (4-48) and hence redundant. (In the GB system, the relation between the two co-referential noun phrases is called Control.) As for the configurations in (5-11b), these arise when a (bracketed) infinitival PP with a null subject DP occurs in a subject: (5-13)

[PRO to admit guilt] might be a mistake. [PRO to have scheduling difficulties] would be unusual. [What PRO to do] is unclear. [PRO to stay out late] Sam might consider unwise.

When such null subjects occur in subject or adjunct DPs, it appears that they can have arbitrary reference, depending essentially on pragmatic factors, and is widely termed Arbitrary Control. This Arbitrary Control (free reference) is the same as that discussed for null subjects of gerunds in section 5.1.1. 6 According to my general hypothesis, semi-clause complements XP are selected by the feature +___V. By the Economy Principles (4-40) of chapter 4, they should contain as few phrases, words and morphemes as possible, which implies that a DP argument of a higher clause should serve as their infinitive’s subject if possible.

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Finally, the interpreted subject of a PP infinitive can be a DP located in the higher clause but lacking an interpretation related to the higher predicate, as exemplified in (5-14a-b). Then the infinitive is called a raising structure.7 Some examples of “raising verbs” with such complements are seem, happen, believe, and consider. Keep in mind that the DPs interpreted as the subject of the semiclauses are not semantically related to the verb of which they are the surface subject or object.8 (5-14) a. The soni seemed to his father/ happened (Øi/ *for his sister) to be cautious. b. The father believed/ considered the soni (Øi/ *for his sister) to be cautious. Obligatory Control and Raising can be conceptualized as subcases of the same phenomenon. In Obligatory Control, according to Koster (1978a) and Hornstein (1999), a DP interpreted in a lower clause can receive a second semantic role in the higher clause, from a higher predicate such as decide, promise, persuade or tell.9 Under this conception, the moved or raised DP is then said to “control” or “bind” the DP subject (Øi) in the lower clause as in (5-12a-b), but otherwise Obligatory Control and Raising come down to the same thing. The difference is only that a raised DP, while a controller, receives no Theta Role from a predicate in the clause where it surfaces.10 It is of course not typical that a DP in an argument position receives no Theta Role within that argument’s predicate. But raising verbs such as seem, happen,

7 For obvious reasons, the structure (5-12a) is named object control, and that in (5-12b) subject control. Analogously, the structure (5-14a) is called raising to subject, and that in (5-14b) raising to object. In an alternative analysis, DPs don’t surface in a higher object position, but instead receive exceptional case across a semi-clause boundary. For decades much effort was expended over different proposals for deriving these constructions from general principles. In my view, these efforts did not improve on Koster’s (1978a) assimilation of raising to a subcase of control. 8 Both control and raising constructions share a property used throughout the history of generative grammar: namely that a given DP may receive its interpretation as a subject of a predicate in a lower clause, and then move (or “raise”) into a higher clause, leaving an empty “trace” in its original positon. The raised DP then becomes the “antecedent” of a DP trace (Øt) in the position of the lower subject, as in (5-14a/b). 9 A DP that receives two semantic roles from one lower and one higher predicate is underlined in an example from Chomsky (1981): John ate the carrots raw. 10 As noted repeatedly in the literature, the indirect object of promise is not interpreted as the controller of the subject of its complement infinitive. Koster (1978a) proposes that this indirect object and perhaps a few other DPs are lexically marked as incompatible with the semantic role of Agent. In all other cases, Rosenbaum’s (1967) “Minimal Distance Principle”, subsumed here under Verbal Subjects, predicts the position of the controller or raised DPs in (5-12).

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believe, and consider are all precisely atypical in this way because they are lexically stipulated as also allowing uninterpreted expletive arguments (underlined): (5-15)

It seemed to the father/ It happened that the older child was reckless. Nobody could believe it that Charlie had won the race.

(5-16)

It was believed/ considered the child was too reckless. That the child was cautious the father honestly believed Ø to be the case.

In conclusion, these DPs that are uninterpreted in the higher clauses in (5-14) do not need to result from being transformationally “raised”. Like other controllers, they are antecedents of, and co-referential with, embedded null subjects, and it is these controlled PRO that receive an interpretation. As for selection of semi-clause complements with internal null subjects (socalled PRO and trace subjects), I have proposed that obligatory control infinitives are an unmarked and most economical realization of the feature +___V. Given the reduction of raising to control, the same can be said for raising predicates. Fewer predicates select raising complements, but among these are several that are very frequent (happen, seem, believe, find, want). I attribute raising configurations not to some (rather special) movement but to the fact that its apparent “landing sites” are simply argument DPs which don’t receive any Theta Role within their own clause. DPs in these positions are either uninterpreted expletives, or interpreted by virtue of being controllers.

5.2 Misleading similarities of gerunds and infinitives I now turn to a central claim of this chapter, which is showing that to-infinitives and gerunds have sharply different distributions, a fact which both traditional and previous generative treatments have failed to present clearly or accurately. Nonetheless, these distinct patterns are not unfamiliar. In perfect conformity with the predictions made by the semi-clause structures of chapter 4, English gerunds have the distribution of noun phrases, while its infinitives have instead that of prepositional phrases.11 Grammars of English unfailingly point out that according to the form of their verbs, there are three types of subordinate clause complements: (i) finite clauses

11 It is surprising that their distinct syntax has never really been appreciated, let alone characterized.

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introduced by that (which can sometimes be deleted) or if, (ii) infinitives (in which the verb is uninflected), and (iii) gerunds/ participles, whose first verb ends in –ing.12 These grammars go on to observe that all three types occur in different sentence functions (that is, with different grammatical relations). Apparently all three can serve as either subjects (5-17) or objects (5-18), with various restrictions on the classes of verbs that select them. (5-17)

a.

Finite clause subjects: That we had to use that airport annoyed us. That Bill knows German well was obvious to all of them. b. Infinitival subjects: To find a job nearby would be a pleasant surprise. To read so many magazines is a waste of time. For the house to be painted would upset him. c. Gerund subjects: Your being able to find work nearby would be surprising. Reading so many magazines is a waste of time. Mary’s having so many books impressed him.

(5-18) a.

Finite clause objects: Ann believed (that) Mary was a foreign agent. Ann will see to it that you have a reservation. b. Infinitival objects: Bill would prefer for Mary to stay a while. Susan tried to buy a ticket on time. Barbara decided to buy fewer foreign books. c. Gerund objects: Bill would prefer buying fewer foreign books. Ann regretted stealing Mary’s book. Ann will see to your buying a ticket in time.

However, these apparently free alternations are quite misleading; there are more differences than similarities between infinitives and gerunds. For example, one 12 With certain main verbs, subordinate clause complements can also take the form of “indirect questions,” finite or infinitival clauses introduced by if, whether or a wh-phrase. For my purposes here, finite indirect questions are treated as finite complements, and infinitival indirect questions are grouped with infinitives. Traditional grammar glosses over the impossibility of basing indirect questions on gerunds (*Which gifts buying for teenagers is a delicate issue; *We forgot how often changing the filters.) The analysis in section 5.7.2 returns to and explains this restriction.

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widely recognized asymmetry is that as objects of prepositions, only gerunds (V+ing) occur freely as in (5-19a), in contrast to finite and infinitival clauses, which do not (5-19b). (5-19)

a.

Gerund objects of prepositions: John just came back from driving his cab. She blamed it on Bill’s being too strict. Because of John’s being old, Mary gets a pension. Your explanation for the table’s being scratched sounds suspicious. b. Finite and infinitival objects of prepositions: *John just came back from (to) drive his cab/ (that)he drove his cab all day. *She blamed it on (Bill) to be too strict/ (that) Bill is too strict. *Because of (John) to be old/ John is so old, Mary gets a pension. *Your explanation for the table to be scratched sounds suspicious.

This restriction is usually attributed to some unpredictable asymmetry in English, with no further analysis. We will see below that the difference between (5-19a-b) falls out naturally from a general structural hypothesis about gerunds, already implicit in (5-4). Terminology. Since this chapter will group together finite and infinitival clauses on the one hand, and gerunds and participles on the other, a term is needed to encompass the former but not the latter. So rather than resort to a new label or to the clumsy phrase, “non-gerund, non-participial clauses,” I will use the term “verbal clause” here to include only finite and infinitival clauses and exclude gerunds and participles. As we proceed, an informal justification for this term will arise from the fact that gerunds share aspects of noun phrases, and that participles share aspects of adjective phrases, which finite and infinitival clauses don’t share. So in a way, only these latter are “purely verbal.” (5-20) Verbal Clauses. In this study, “Verbal Clauses” refers to finite and infinitival clauses, and excludes gerunds and participles, i.e., clauses whose head is V-ing. Thus, the term “verbal clause” does not encompass the gerunds in (5-17c), (5-18c) and (5-19a). This decision has no implication for how clauses should be assigned structure or interpretation; the term in (5-20) simply provides a unified way to refer to non-gerund and non-participle clauses. A typical approach to differences between infinitives (5-17b)-(5-18b) and gerunds (5-17c)-(5-18c) is to say that they occur in the same structural positions, but are dis-

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tinguished by some delicate and formally unspecified “differences in meaning.” The nature of such differences is elusive, since the complements in, for example, Mary forgot to turn down the heat and Mary forgot turning down the heat differ in truth values, while John started to work on his paper and John started working on his paper differ only in some “semantic nuance” which does not involve truth values of the complement clause.13 Similarly, the complement clauses in the pair She can’t afford owning/ to own that car differ in factivity, but the difference between I’d like having/ to have an expensive car is again only a “nuance.” Such impressionistic semantics-based discussions, no matter how many ways rephrased, never succeed in uncovering a predictive general distinction between infinitives and gerunds/ participles.

5.3 Contrasting distributions of gerunds and infinitives 5.3.1 Gerunds are noun phrases The semantics-based distinctions of traditional grammar, which some generative treatments have more or less continued, can be fruitfully replaced by an accurate, simple and empirically testable structural distinction between gerunds and verbal clauses. The evidence here will show that the “pre-verbal” position of verbal clauses in (5-17a-b) is not the subject position occupied by the gerunds in (5-17c). In the same vein, the “post-verbal” position of verbal clauses in (5-18a-b) is not the same as the object position of gerunds in (5-18c).14 In both cases, only the gerunds should be analyzed as DPs. (5-21)

English Gerund Distribution. English gerunds are DPs. They occur in all and only the positions where noun phrases (DPs) can be freely generated.

13 The “method” of traditional descriptions is to take an individual verb and comment on whatever meanings come to the mind of the analyst. Thus with remember to V, the remembering precedes the action, whereas with remember V+ing, the remembering follows it. The comments must be modified for each verb considered (in forget to V, the activity need not happen at all, and with either use of start, one can’t distinguish starting an action and the action itself). These discrepancies are of no matter in such analyses, as their goal is to accumulate expert commentary rather than to formally capture generalizations. 14 As throughout, recall that I use the now common symbol DP for (Determined) Noun Phrase, or Noun Phrase which has a possible Determiner. Readers used to the symbol NP should simply take the two symbols as equivalent here.

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Ordinarily, there is a single phrasal position before an English clause’s first verbal position I, where I is the finite auxiliary. This single phrase, often labeled the Specifier of IP, is the position of the subject DP (Chomsky 1986). So by (5-21) gerunds should be uniformly acceptable as DP subjects both in main clauses and in all types of embedded clauses. The underlined gerunds (5-22i-vi) confirm this prediction. Throughout, I will use σ as a categorical symbol for verbal clauses. (In the following examples, σ is thus not the category of the underlined gerunds, but of the IPs that contain the gerunds as subjects.) (5-22)

(i)

Subjects of clausal complements to verbs, including indirect questions: I don’t believe (that) [σ Mary avoiding sweets improves her health]. She forgets [CP how expensive [σ visiting the dentist is]]. (ii) Subjects of clausal complements to adjectives: John was happy that [σ owning a car didn’t disqualify you]. Nobody is ready for [σ wearing headphones to be legally required]. (iii) Subjects of clausal complements to nouns: He protested the decision that [σ his/him being on time counted for nothing]. We are noticing a tendency for [σ smoking tobacco to be criminalized]. (iv) Subjects of comparative clauses: A day at the beach is more fun than [σ playing golf is]. Going by car doesn’t seem as relaxing as [σ riding a horse used to seem]. (v) Subjects of adverbial clauses: Although [σ the house(’s) being empty may depress you], it pleases me. He exercises so rarely that [σ his avoiding sweets makes no difference]. (vi) Subjects of relative clauses, whatever the grammatical function of the bold relativized phrase: Pupils for whom [σ diagramming sentences was easy] often became linguists. Being a citizen is the reason why [σ your having insurance can protect you]. Situations in which [σ writing out a check is necessary] should be avoided. It was only the salesman who [σ my/me buying a car seemed important to]. She likes the kind of man who/that [σ seeing a few movies a year will satisfy].

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The next section will contrast the pattern of gerunds in DP subject position in (5-17c) with the distinct “pre-verbal position” of verbal clauses in (5-17a-b). It will show that these initial verbal clauses are outside the IPs where they are interpreted as subjects.

5.3.2 Verbal clauses: Not in the DP subject position The examples below show that, unlike gerunds, verbal clauses in the pre-verbal position of main clauses are not DPs. They are rather “topicalized” clausal constituents, notated here by the symbol CP familiar from Government and Binding. If they were simply subject DPs, they should embed freely. However, as soon as some verbal clause σ is embedded in another CP’s initial position, σ becomes ungrammatical, as illustrated in the underlined examples (5-23i-vi). (5-23) Six excluded contexts for verbal clause subjects (i) Verbal clause subjects are excluded in complements to verbs: *I don’t believe (that) [σ for Mary to avoid sweets improves her health]. *She forgets [CP how expensive [σ to visit a good dentist is recently]. (ii) Verbal clause subjects are excluded in complements to adjectives: *John was happy that [σ to own a car didn’t disqualify him]. *Nobody is ready for [σ that one exercise daily to be legally required]. (iii) Verbal clause subjects are excluded in complements to nouns: *He protested the decision that [σ for him to be on time counted for nothing]. *We are noticing a tendency for [σ that we smoke cigars to be criminalized]. (iv) Verbal clause subjects are excluded in comparative clauses: *A day at the beach is more fun than [σ to play golf is]. *Going by car doesn’t seem as relaxing as [σ to ride a horse used to seem]. (v) Verbal clause subjects are excluded in adverbial clauses: *Although [σ that the house is empty may depress you], it pleases me. *Although [σ for the house to be empty may depress you], it pleases me. *He exercises so rarely that [σ for him to avoid sweets won’t improve his health]. (vi) Verbal clause subjects are excluded in relative clauses, regardless of function: *Pupils for whom [σ. to diagram sentences was easy] often became linguists.

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*Being a citizen is the reason why [σ that you have insurance protects you]. *Situations in which [σ to write out a check is necessary] should be avoided. *It was the salesman who [σ for me to buy a car seemed important to]. *She likes the kind of man that [σ to see a few movies a year will satisfy]. These diverse paradigms show clearly that verbal clauses (= infinitives and finite clauses) cannot generally occur in subject position, in contrast to the gerunds in (5-22). (5-24) Topicalization as a Root Transformation. Clausal CPs occur initially (in “topicalized” position) only in main clauses, also called “root” clauses.15 The structural subject position in the main clauses of (5-17a-b) is actually a null DP between the preposed verbal clause CP and the finiteness position I. The topicalized, pre-subject CP is then co-indexed with an “empty expletive” DP, as in (5-25). Section 5.6 returns to fully analyzing these null expletives. (5-25) [CP That Jim knows German well]j [IP [DP Ø]j [I was] [VP obvious to us all]]. [CP For the house to be re-painted]j [IP [DP Ø]j [I would] [VP upset him]]. In root clauses, initial verbal clauses are thus external to IP and initial in CP. And so in (5-23), they are excluded entirely in embedded clauses.16 The following generalization relates the exclusions in (5-23) to the structure in (5-25). (5-26) Exclusion of verbal clause subjects. Verbal clauses never occur in subject DPs. The conclusion (5-26) is further confirmed by clauses in which an inverted I constituent separates the initial positions of CP and IP, rather than following both.

15 The term “topicalized” for pre-subject phrases other than adverbials is due to Ross (1967), who in the same work gave the first patterns showing that such phrases are largely limited to main clauses. This restriction is more fully exemplified and explained theoretically in Emonds (2012a), where the term “root clause” is defined to include main clauses and some other unembedded constructions that share certain of their properties. 16 The analysis and conclusion about English “subject sentences”, from Emonds (1976: ch. III), is almost identical to the analysis and conclusion of Koster (1978b) for Dutch.

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Then as predicted by English Gerund Distribution (5-21), only gerunds are allowed in the subject position of IP. For example, gerunds are permitted subjects when a wh-phrase or negative phrase and an inverted auxiliary I both precede IP. (5-27) Why did [IP Mary’s liking old records irritate him]? When did [IP arriving so early become a requirement]? Never will [IP being comfortable be a priority in this office]. A disease like that [IP taking a lot of pills won’t cure]. But because the initial position inside IP is a DP, verbal clause subjects are excluded under the same structural conditions: (5-28) *Why did [IP that Mary liked old records irritate him]? *When did [IP to arrive so early become a requirement]? *Never will [IP to be comfortable be a priority in this office]. *A disease like that [IP to take a lot of pills won’t cure]. The wh-phrase is not the crucial factor here. Even in a simple yes-no question, a main clause, I moves over a subject into a root projection CP above IP (traditionally termed “auxiliary inversion,” but more accurately described as I to C movement). Thus, verbal clauses in what might be thought of as the subject position of declaratives like (5-17a-b) are excluded even in main clauses (5-29). (5-29) *Does that we have to use that airport annoy you? *Wouldn’t to find a well-paying job nearby be a pleasant surprise? *Isn’t to read so many magazines a waste of time? *Would for the house to be painted upset him? As expected according to Gerund Distribution (5-21), no such restriction applies to inverted gerund subjects (5-30), because they are possible in any DP position: (5-30) Does us/our having to use that airport annoy you? Wouldn’t finding a well-paying job nearby be a pleasant surprise? Isn’t reading so many magazines a waste of time? Would the house being painted upset him? Ross (1967) suggests that the verbal clauses are excluded in subject position because in (5-27)-(5-30) they are “sentence-internal.” However, the examples (5-31a) show that verbal clauses are equally well excluded at the right edge as well as internally.

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 5 Gerunds vs. infinitives: Less alike than they look

a.

*How obvious is that Sue is unqualified? *How easy was to hire John? b. How obvious is Sue’s being unqualified? How easy was hiring John?

Again by (5-21), gerunds as in (5-31b) are immune to a restriction on verbal clauses such as (5-26). A final paradigm illustrating (5-26) is that verbal clauses are always ungrammatical as subjects of other (embedded) clauses that are already initial. The initial bracketed clauses in (5-32a) allow gerunds as their subjects (5-32b), as (5-21) predicts. But (5-32c) shows that these same clauses do not allow another verbal clause in their first position, because in general subordinate clauses exclude any pre-subject XPs: (5-32)

a.

[That cigar smoke bothers the teacher] is quite possible. [For another coat of paint to be so expensive] would be no surprise. b. [That smoking cigars bothers the teacher] is quite possible. [For repainting the house to be so expensive] would be no surprise. c. *[That to smoke cigars bothers the teacher] is quite possible. *[For that we are repainting the house to be so expensive] is no surprise.

This section has now amply substantiated the claim that initial verbal clauses occur not as subject DPs, but only in pre-subject position, and only in main clauses. 5.3.3 Initial verbal clauses as root constructions In pre-subject position, finite clauses and infinitives resemble several other English “root constructions” underlined in (5-33): (5-33) Diverse Root Frontings in English (Emonds 1976: ch. II) a. Down the street rolled the baby carriage. b. Off came the lid. Down came the flag! c. More interesting would seem to be a talk on ceramics. d. In the hall was hanging a portrait of Lincoln. There are several approaches in the generative literature for how to best exclude such root structures in embedded contexts, but all would seem able to exclude initial verbal clauses in the same way as other non-DP constituents. I feel that Emonds (2012a) is an adequate and comprehensive account, but exactly how to analyze main clause/ root constructions is beyond the scope of this volume. For

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my purposes here, (5-34) can be taken as a broad but accurate descriptive generalization: (5-34) English root clause configurations. A non-DP argument, such as a verbal clause or those fronted in (5-33), can occur sentence-initially only in a main/ root clause. So, as a counterpart to the distributional generalization for gerunds (5-21), an equally general claim can be made about the distribution of English verbal clauses (finite and infinitival). The first part of this claim has just been established, and the second part is the topic of section 5.4.2. (5-35)

Distribution of English Verbal Clauses. When embedded, verbal clauses occur only (i) topicalized in main (=root) clauses, or (ii) rightmost in larger phrases.

5.4 Gerund objects vs. verbal clause complements 5.4.1 So-called subordinating conjunctions The category P in current generative grammar has a wider distribution than in traditional grammar, and for very good reasons. If different uses of a word both exhibit the same pre-modification system (for example, the intensifier right and measure phrases) and also satisfy the same selectional requirements, they should be in a single category. For example, transitive and intransitive forms of a verb are both “verbs”. By the same reasoning, traditional prepositions and subordinating temporal conjunctions such as until, before, after and since are all in the same category P. They differ only in whether they take DP or IP complements (Emonds 1972). (5-36) The girls worked right until {their bedtime/ they went to bed}. The explosion occurred two hours after {the cabinet meeting/ the cabinet met}. They will put the interview before { the cabinet meeting/ the cabinet meets}. So if a traditionally named preposition is lexically specified as P, +___DP, a homonymous traditional subordinating conjunction should be specified as P,

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+___IP, meaning its complements are verbal clauses rather than DPs. The Ps in (5-36), until, after, before, have both frames.17 Given the distributional generalization for gerunds (5-21), it is expected that they will occur with any and all prepositions which have the selection feature +___DP. This predicts the initial observation (5-19a) for Ps such as on, for, because of: Since these same Ps lack a selection feature +___PP, they are incompatible with infinitival verbal clause complements, as seen earlier in (5-19b): (5-19)

b. *She blamed it on (Bill) to be too strict. *Your explanation for the table to be scratched sounds suspicious. *Because of (John) to be old, Mary gets a pension.

If we instead choose Ps with the selection feature +__IP or +__PP (although, because, in order, so as) but lacking the selection frame +__DP, gerunds are predictably excluded. (5-37) a.

Our friends ordered more coffee, so as to be more alert. Our friends ordered more coffee, in order to stay awake all night. *Our friends ordered more coffee, in order for a safer trip. * Our friends ordered more coffee, in order (for) driving all night. b. We were cold, although we wore warm clothing. *We were cold, although warm clothing. *We were cold, although dressing warmly. c. Because John is so old, Mary gets a pension. *Because John’s age, Mary gets a pension. *Because John’s being so old, Mary gets a pension.

The P despite, which differs from although only in its subcategorization, exhibits the expected reversed acceptability judgments, with gerunds again patterning as DPs: (5-38) *We were cold, despite we wore warm clothing. We were cold, despite warm clothing/ dressing warmly. The verbal clause sisters of the traditional “subordinating conjunctions” such as in order and although are required by (5-35) to be final in their PPs. Of course, since

17 Emonds (1985: ch. 7) argues that verbal clauses represented by the symbol CP (= C + IP) are special cases of PPs, whose head is a grammatical P that selects a clausal sister. That is, the subordinate conjunctions that, if and lest should be reanalyzed as P with finite clause complements.

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like DP objects they are sole sisters to P, it is not word order that distinguishes them from gerunds here, but rather the classes of Ps that select them. Gerunds are selected like other DPs, while infinitives are selected like finite clauses. Finally, verbal clauses, even though they appear as topicalized subjects of active verbs (5-39a), are impossible in passive by-phrases, which can contain only DPs (5-39b). (5-39) a.

That some boys were dancing together was amusing John. For Susan to arrive early would cause embarrassment. That you spoke out of turn didn’t help the situation. To suggest devaluation would anger the bankers. b. * John was being amused (by) that some boys were dancing together *Embarrassment would be caused (by) for Susan to arrive early. *The situation wasn’t helped (by) that you spoke out of turn. *The bankers would be angered (by) to suggest devaluation.

We have now seen why, in contrast to gerunds, English verbal clauses (finite and infinitival) predictably do not occur as objects of Ps such as by, to and with, whose selection feature is +___DP. The next section will show that verbal clauses do not actually serve as direct objects of verbs either, counter to the impression given by the data in (5-18). Only gerunds are truly in DP object position.

5.4.2 Verbal clauses can’t precede indirect objects The syntactic distinctions between verbs that select gerund complements and those that take verbal clause complements become evident only in more complex structures. Such structures reveal that the seemingly similar position of verbal clause complements in (5-18a-b) and gerunds in (5-18c) is as illusory as their seeming free alternation as subjects in (5-17). Consider the verb prefer in (5-40a), which can select a gerund, infinitive or finite complement. The gerund is necessarily a direct object DP, and so can be followed by another selected PP, which expresses “an option not preferred”. But verbal clauses are already at the end of the VP, so another complement PP cannot follow them (5-40b). (5-40) a. b.

Bill prefers that we ride bicycles/ to ride a bicycle. Bill preferred riding a bicycle to endless hitchhiking. *Bill preferred to ride a bicycle/ that we ride bicycles to endless hitchhiking.

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c. d. e.

I will take this responsibility/ repairing the roof upon myself. I will take it upon myself to repair the roof. *I will take to repair the roof upon myself.

Similarly, while the idiom take upon oneself can select either a gerund or an infinitive, only the gerund object DP can precede the idiomatic complement PP in (5-40c); the infinitive can occur only at the end of VP after any selected PPs (5-40d). Precisely because verbal clauses are not DP objects, they are necessarily in VP-final position (= “extraposition”). Hence, unlike gerunds, they cannot precede a selected PP complement (5-40). Along these same lines, the verb report can have a finite clause or a gerund as an object, and also an indirect object. If the object clause is finite, it must follow the indirect object in extraposition and not be in DP position, whereas, as now expected, an object gerund can precede the indirect object. (5-41)

John reported to the police that he saw the fight. *John reported that he saw the fight to the police. John reported seeing the fight to the police. ?John reported to the police seeing the fight.18

The analysis of this study based on (5-35) thus explains the contrasts in (5-40)(5-41). Alternations between gerunds and verbal clauses, such as after verbs like prefer and report, are not so widespread, which in itself suggests that the complements belong to different categories, DPs vs. IPs and PPs. There are some other verbs whose object DPs cannot be gerunds (tell, promise, teach,), even though their objects alternate with verbal clauses: (5-42) She told the children a fairy tale/ how to make a kite/ that she was ill. You promised Mary an evening out/ that you would do the wash/ to be quiet. The man taught his sons relativity theory/ that hypotheses can be wrong. For several such verbs, the direct and indirect objects can appear in either order; see also section 3.7.

18 Gerund objects can appear at the end of the VP, as in the last example of (5-41), by virtue of the “Heavy NP Shift” of Ross (1967), which allows object NPs containing clausal constituents such as VP to move to clause-final position.

5.4 Gerund objects vs. verbal clause complements 

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(5-43) She told a fairy tale to the children. She told the children a fairy tale. You promised an evening out to Mary. You promised Mary an evening out. The man taught relativity theory to his sons. The man taught his sons relativity theory. However, Distribution of Verbal Clauses (5-35) predicts that a finite or infinitival complement cannot be an internal DP in a VP, but must be at the end of VP, in “extraposition”. That is, (5-35) predicts that the alternations in (5-43) don’t extend to verbal clauses. (5-44)

*She told how to make a kite to the children. *She told that she was ill to the children. *You promised that you would do the wash to Mary. *You promised to be quiet to Mary. *The man taught that hypotheses can be wrong to his sons.

Still other verbs (say, expect) can take verbal clauses but exclude gerunds as objects, and moreover require any indirect object DP to have an overt head P: (5-45) They expect that you co-operate. They expect some cooperation of (from) you. John said that her family was dysfunctional. John said something nasty to Mary. When such verbs take both an indirect object and a verbal clause, the clause cannot be in object DP position (before the indirect object), but must again, by (5-35), be at the end of the containing VP: (5-46)

They expect (it) of you that you cooperate. *They expect that you cooperate of you. John said to Mary that her family was dysfunctional. *John said that her family was dysfunctional to Mary.

Finally, adjectival secondary predicates modify a direct object and must follow it inside a verb phrase (5-47a). As is now familiar, this object can be a gerund, as in (5-47b). If one tries to replace a direct object with a verbal clause (that is, to use an infinitive as subject of a secondary predicate), the result is clearly ungrammatical (5-47c):

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(5-47) a.

The women consider {their grievances important/ *important their grievances}. b. The women consider writing down their grievances pointless. c. *The women consider to write down their grievances pointless.

This contrast is also explained by the proposal that gerunds but not verbal clauses are DP. Overall, we have seen that any selected complements of a verb can always follow a gerund, because a direct object (the gerund) can always precede other complements. In contrast, selected verbal clauses do not precede these same complements because they are not DPs but rather must be in the final position under VP. Thus, gerunds are well-behaved DPs in standard positions of subjects and objects, while verbal clause complements, when post-verbal, must invariably be at the end of VPs, the key generalization stated in (5-35).

5.4.3 Why gerunds are ill-formed as possessives For completeness, we should consider gerunds in one final sentence function, the English pre- and post-nominal possessive DPs. English Gerund Distribution (5-21) states that gerunds occur in positions where DPs can be freely generated. Now in possessive positions, DPs are restricted as to their form. Thus, alongside I know the ticket to Chicago’s cost; I met that cousin of the history teacher’s, we find that possessive DPs can neither be event nominalizations nor contain VPs: *I don’t know the arrival in Chicago’s time; *I never met that cousin of the man teaching history’s. Since gerunds contain VPs and furthermore express events, it therefore follows from the preceding without stipulation that they are unacceptable in possessive positions: (5-48)

?Does he know about [DP [DP smoking pot’s] being illegal]? ?We agree about [DP [DP shoveling snow’s] being fruitless.

Even so, since possessives are DP positions, where verbal clauses do not appear, the latter are much less acceptable than gerunds in these positions. (5-49)

*Does he know about [DP [DP to smoke pot’s] being illegal]? *We agree about to shovel snow being fruitless.

Thus, the possessive position for DPs also shows a difference between marginal DP gerunds (5-48) and completely excluded non-DP verbal clauses (5-49).

5.5 Independent diagnostics that only gerunds are DPs 

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5.5 Independent diagnostics that only gerunds are DPs 5.5.1 Coordination with lexical NPs Generally speaking, categorical identity is a necessary condition for coordination (Higgins 1973: 191).19 The fact that DPs with lexical N heads freely coordinate with English gerunds in all DP positions confirms the correctness of English Gerund Distribution (5-21); the reader can check that the co-ordinates can be in either order. (5-50) She always liked physical exercise and watching television shows. The town proposed a tax increase and reviving the translation service. Outdoor bathrooms and pitching a tent every day wore us out. The country aimed at self-sufficiency in fuel and discontinuing food imports. Someone arranged for a new swimming pool and painting the house. The same diagnostic shows that English infinitives and finite clauses are not DPs, again confirming the Distribution of English Verbal Clauses (5-35): (5-51)

*She always liked physical exercise and to watch television shows. *The town proposed a tax increase and to revive the translation service. *The town proposed a tax increase and that offices be moved to the outskirts. * To pitch a tent every day and outdoor bathrooms will wear us out. *Outdoor bathrooms and that we couldn’t cook ourselves irritated us. *The country aimed at self-sufficiency in fuel and to discontinue food imports. *Someone arranged for the house to be painted and a new swimming pool.

The different categorical status this chapter accords to gerunds and infinitives also accounts automatically for the inability of gerunds and verbal clauses to coordinate: (5-52) *She always liked watching television and to play volleyball. *Eating canned foods and to pitch a tent every day would irritate us. *The town proposed increasing taxes and that its offices be moved. *The advisor suggested that we rent out our house and selling some stocks.

19 One exception to this is some adjective phrases coordinate with non-locational prepositional phrases: Mary is clever and without financial worries.

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These acceptability distinctions remain mysterious in accounts that consider gerunds to differ from verbal clauses only in “semantic nuance” (meaning) rather than in categorical status (form). In contrast, these differences are predicted and explained by the structural generalizations (5-21) and (5-35). These coordination patterns indicate that coordinated verbal clauses are not separate DPs at all, while gerunds can be coordinate DPs, and hence lead to plural number agreement. A third possibility is that coordinate gerunds are two VPs that form a single VPs under a single singular DP. These possibilities predict three different patterns of number agreement with coordinated clausal subjects, exactly as observed. (5-53) Coordinate verbal clause subjects (a singular null expletive DP subject) [CP To paint a house and to build a garage] [IP [DP Ø] is/*are a year’s work.] [CP That Ann married and that Jim was single] [IP [DP Ø] was/*were widely known.] [CP That taxes went up and that services got worse] [IP [DP Ø] doesn’t/*don’t surprise me.] Gerunds in contrast can be coordinated via two different structures. They can either form coordinate DPs, which gives rise to plural agreement, or they can consist of coordinate VPs grouped under a single DP. The latter option leads to singular agreement. (5-54) Coordinate Gerund Subjects (singular or plural DPs) [DP Painting the house and building a garage] is/are a full year’s work. [DP Him marrying a nun and his sister staying single] was/were kept secret. [DP Taxes going up and services getting worse] doesn’t/don’t surprise me. These agreements contrast coordinate verbal clauses interpreted as a subject via an expletive (always with singular agreement) and coordinate gerund subjects, with either singular or plural agreement. These patterns provide decisive evidence that every gerund can be a DP, while no verbal clause can ever be.

5.5.2 Cleft focus position as a diagnostic for DP The focus position in English cleft sentences, underlined in (5-55), is a diagnostic for the constituents DP (though not predicate nominals) and P-DP.

5.5 Independent diagnostics that only gerunds are DPs 

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(5-55) It’s the lemon pie that we disliked/ talked about. Was it John that you were speaking to/ broke the window? It was to John that she spoke. It’s because of the flood/ because it was raining that they are leaving. It is with great pleasure that I present our speaker. As seen in the examples (5-56), the cleft focus position excludes (i) APs, (ii) PPs not containing a DP, and (iii) VPs (including participles introduced by V-ing). (5-56) (i)

*It’s very unhappy that Bill is/ appeared. *It was too aggressively that she spoke. *It’s quite dark that he likes his study. (ii) *It was right off that they ran. *It’s out that the kids want to eat. *It’s unless/ although the weather is bad that she will bicycle to work. (iii) *It is sell some stock that you should (do). *It was ask John for money that I heard you. *It was playing outside that the children continued.

Given these distinctions, Gerund Distribution (5-21) correctly predicts that gerunds appear freely in cleft focus position, while infinitives and that-clauses do not: (5-57) It was buying new trousers/ *to buy new trousers that he hated. It’s John’s knowing Boston/ *for John to know Boston that might surprise her. It’s Mary driving carelessly/ *for Mary to drive carelessly that upsets Ann. It is explaining your motive/ *that you explain your motive that is important. It must be filing that report that Susan is concentrating on. Was it her smoking cigars/ *that she smoked cigars that John criticized? The cleft sentence diagnostic for DPs thus confirms that neither infinitival nor finite Verbal Clauses are ever DPs, another correct consequence of (5-35). (5-58) *It is to always be on time that you should decide. *It’s that John has arrived too late that Bill realizes. *It was to report on time that we failed. *It was that the guests left early that John drank so much. *It’s for the kids to be able to walk to school that they moved back. To conclude, all available constituency tests converge on one result: they show that English gerunds behave as DPs, while English verbal clauses are definitely not DPs.

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5.6 Expletive chains: Interpreting clauses as DP arguments Section 5.3.2 lays the basis for the claim that any sentence-initial verbal clause in English has the structure in (5-25), repeated here, where this clause is co-indexed with (or “binds”) a “null expletive” in the main clause subject position: (5-25) [CP That Jim knows German]j [IP [DP Ø]j [I was] [VP obvious to us all]]. [CP For the house to be repainted]j [IP [DP Ø]j [I would] [VP upset him]]. To further motivate this structure, we can examine the nature of “expletives” in more general terms. In a number of constructions, some XP in a clause which is not itself a structural subject (or object) can be interpreted as a “substitute” for that subject (or object). Thus, the bracketed CPs in (5-25) above and the underlined CPs in (5-59) below are neither DPs nor structural subjects; the subjects are rather the null DPs inside IP, which are then co-indexed with these overt topicalized CPs: (5-59) [CP That the boys were dancing together]i [IP [DP Ø]i was amusing Harry]. [CP That you spoke out of turn]i [IP [DP Ø]i didn’t help the situation]. [CP For John to arrive now]i [IP [DP Ø]i would cause embarrassment]. [CP To suggest devaluation]i [IP [DP Ø]i would anger the bankers]. The underlined verbal clauses in (5-59) are interpreted with the same semantic roles that these predicates ordinarily assign to their subjects. For example, the last underlined clause has the same role as devaluation in Devaluation would anger the bankers. (5-60) Expletive Pronouns. A semantically null subject or object DP is an “expletive”. An XP co-indexed with an expletive is called its “associate”. These two constituents together are called an “expletive chain.” (5-61) Interpretation of Associates. An associate is interpreted as having the semantic role that a predicate can assign to the position of its expletive.

5.6 Expletive chains: Interpreting clauses as DP arguments 

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The English expletives recognized in traditional grammar are the meaningless overt pronominals it and there.20 Such expletives always bind (= are co-indexed with) lower phrases XP in the same clause, which are, as in (5-60), called their associates. The expletive for nominal associates is there (5-62), while for PP associates (5-63) it is it. (5-62) There was a warmer place in the hallway. There will be many new students who lack rooms. There has never occurred such a cold summer. Today, there are a lot of people homeless. It might be warmer in the hallway. It is more comfortable by the fireplace. b. The idea that it might be warmer in the hallway seemed silly. Let’s go into the library because it is more comfortable by the fireplace.

(5-63) a.

Overt expletives are hierarchically distinct from the earlier null expletives in (5-25) and (5-59), which are lower in a tree than their associates. But both types are alike in being in subject position and assigning the subject’s semantic role to a co-indexed associate XP. In main clauses, the underlined associate locative PPs in (5-63a) can also be sentence-initial (“topicalized”) and can bind a null expletive in subject position, just like topicalized verbal clauses in (5-25) and (5-59): (5-64)

[PP In the hallway]i [IP [DP Ø]i might be warmer]. [PP By the fireplace]i [IP [DP Ø]i would be a better place to sit].

Just like topicalized clauses, pre-subject PP associates are excluded in dependent clauses: (5-65) *His claim that in the hallway might be warmer seemed silly. *They went into the library because by the fireplace was comfortable.

20 Analyses with null expletives are unavailable in traditional grammar, because it never uses or even imagines “empty phrasal categories”. Consequently, traditional treatments are at a loss to explain the many distributional differences between English infinitival and gerund subjects.

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 5 Gerunds vs. infinitives: Less alike than they look

This restriction on topicalized PPs in root clauses is exactly the same restriction on pre-subject CP associates that section 5.4 illustrated with many examples in (5-23).21 The generalization (5-66) summarizes the patterns of expletives and associates. (5-66)

Associate-Expletive Binding (English): (i) If an expletive asymmetrically binds (= c-commands) its associate, the expletive is overt. (ii) If an associate (one that is topicalized) binds an expletive, the expletive is null.

In these terms, the “extraposed” clausal subjects underlined in (5-67) are the associates of the subject expletive it which binds them. (5-67) It was amusing Harry that the boys were dancing together. It is obvious to all of us that Bill knows German well. It would cause embarrassment for John to arrive now. It didn’t help the situation that you spoke out of turn. It would anger the bankers to suggest devaluation. It is a waste of time to read so many magazines. The extraposed clauses with subject interpretations in (5-67) are exactly those which can also appear sentence-initially, as in (5-25) and (5-32). In both positions, these verbal clauses are linked to expletive subjects, and so have the same subject interpretations. But unlike ungrammatical topicalized clauses in embedded sentences, extraposed associate clauses are well-formed in any type of embedded clause: (5-68)

I don’t believe (that) [σ it would improve her health for Mary to avoid sweets] She forgets [CP how expensive [σ it is to go to the dentist]]. Nobody is ready for [σ it to be legally required that one exercise daily]. He protested the decision that [σ it counted for nothing for him to be on time]. A day at the beach is more fun than [σ it is to play golf].

21 Emonds (1985: ch. 7) gives arguments that verbal clauses usually represented by the symbol CP (= C + IP) reduce to special cases of PPs; their head C is a grammatical P that takes a clausal sister. That is, the subordinate conjunctions of traditional grammar should be reanalyzed as prepositions with clausal complements.

5.6 Expletive chains: Interpreting clauses as DP arguments 

 185

Although [σ it may depress you that the house is empty], it pleases me. Situations in which [σ it is necessary to write out a check] should be avoided. It was the salesman who [σ it seemed important to for me to buy a car]. It also appears that empty expletive DPs can be generated in some object positions and then moved by passivization to the subject position, where an overt expletive it is inserted to bind the extraposed verbal complement: (5-69)

Iti was said t i by John [that we had betrayed him]i. Iti was suggested ti to John [that he was wrong]i.

The overall distribution of finite and infinitival verbal clauses in English can be summarized as follows. These clauses can serve as either topicalized subjects, selected complements or freely added adjuncts, but in each case, unless topicalized in root clauses, verbal clauses are rightmost daughters of larger phrases. If they are sisters of selecting verbs, they can be interpreted as subjects or complements of these verbs, but to be interpreted as subjects, they must be bound by an overt subject expletive it, as seen in (5-67). In main clauses, clausal subjects can also appear in pre-subject position as in (5-59). But in dependent clauses, the only position available to verbal clauses is in VP-final “extraposition”, bound by the expletive it. These conclusions dovetail perfectly with the earlier conclusion (5-21) that only gerunds but not verbal clauses appear in DP positions. As CPs, that is PPs of a certain sort (see note 22), verbal clauses can be merged into trees only where PPs can be, either as rightmost daughters of phrases or in initial topicalized position of root clauses. A final detail: as sisters to verbs, clausal complements, though in principle “heavy enough” to be rightmost in a small VP, should still be able to precede a verb’s adverbial adjunct modifiers. And indeed this seems to be the case; in (5-70) the underlined adverbs modify the corresponding underlined main verbs but cannot pragmatically modify the bold embedded predicates: (5-70) They plan to announce that we are capable of reaching Mars today. It pleased Dali that Gala accepted his gift very much. It doesn’t frighten me to watch horror movies anymore. It isn’t necessary to be smart on this campus The most important empirical generalization to be retained from this chapter is that unlike gerunds, English verbal clauses are never structurally DPs. Though they can be interpreted as subjects, as in (5-17a-b), in this use they are structur-

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ally topics in pre-subject position. Therefore, verbal clauses can neither (i) be the focus constituent in clefts like DPs, nor (ii) coordinate with DPs, nor (iii) agree in number like DPs. Their interpretation as subjects, which has confused traditional analyses into thinking that they are subjects, is due to their binding phonetically null expletive subjects of following predicates. Similarly English verbal clauses can also be interpreted as direct objects, because both CPs and DPs can often be selected as complements by the same verbs, such as forget, hate, like, prefer, remember, try, etc. But as we have seen, unlike gerunds, verbal clause complements of such verbs do not show any of the categorial properties of DPs. When we realize that only root/ main clauses tolerate verbal clauses in initial position, we are led to ask: are these constituents transformationally fronted from either the position of the expletive or from an underlying extraposed position of an associate? Such possibilities were in fact proposed in classical transformational grammar (for the first possibility see Rosenbaum 1967), in which topicalized constituents are both selected and interpreted in clause-internal DP positions, contrary to what has been justified here. But there is no real motivation for such movements out of base DP positions. Since Chomsky’s proposal of Full Interpretation,22 constituents can be generated in their surface positions, provided independently motivated principles account for both their positions and interpretation. In the present case, verbal clause arguments share phrase-final positions with many other constructions, and the principle of Associate-Expletive Binding (5-66) interprets them. In fact, there are verb classes that can take two verbal clauses as arguments, one a subject and one an object. In such situations, the subject-interpreted verbal clause can appear nowhere except at the beginning of the sentence (E. Klima, 1967 lectures): (5-71)

a.

That John has blood on his hands proves (that) Mary is innocent. *It proves (that) Mary is innocent that John has blood on his hands. b. That John is late persuades me that the train has been delayed. *It persuades me that the train has been delayed that John is late. c. To see this movie is to relive the past. *It is to relive the past to see this movie.

22 “. . . there is a principle of full interpretation (FI) that requires that every element of PF and LF, taken to be the interface of syntax (in the broad sense) with systems of language use, must receive an appropriate interpretation – must be licensed in the sense indicated. None can simply be disregarded.” (Chomsky 1986b: 98-99)

5.7 Additional features in verbal clauses or gerunds  

 187

On the basis of this pattern, one must conclude that the sentence-initial verbal clauses of (5-17a-b) must be directly generated, or “first merged” in this position, and linked to null expletives in the subject position by Associate Expletive Binding(5-66), thereby satisfying Full Interpretation without movement.

5.7 Additional features in verbal clauses or gerunds The previous chapter concluded that the subcategorization frame +___V is often prevented from selecting a simple VP participle due to Anti-transitivity (4-61), the successor to Chomsky’s Theta Criterion. When this happens, the frame selects either gerunds in DP positions or to-infinitives in phrase-final PP positions. If the lexical frame +___V stands alone, it generates semi-clause complements with obligatorily controlled (null) subjects, both DP gerunds and PP infinitives.23 But why do heads selecting a verbal clause sometimes require a gerund and sometimes an infinitive? Both infinitives as in (5-17b)-(5-18b) and gerunds as in (5-17c)-(5-18c) are Extended Projections based on lexical category heads V and internal structural DP subjects. Furthermore, a glance at the structures of gerunds (5-4) and for-to infinitives (5-8) shows that there is no significant difference between them in phrasal complexity, other than the possible (and less economical) case-marking for in the latter. To answer this question, recall now two of the Economy Principles in chapter 2: (2-38) Syntactic Economy of Representation a. A given XP in LF should be realized with as few phrases as possible. b. A given XP in LF should be realized with as few words as possible. There is a notable and consistent difference in the number of free morphemes (words) required in English to express different types of semi-clauses, as shown in chapter 4. Infinitival verbs minimally require two words and gerunds one. This difference is not a quibble related to spelling; it is now widely recognized that any version of non-prescriptive English permits “split infinitives”, which means that to and a following verb are separate words, while of course V+ing is one word.

23 Optional control complements (whose subjects can be lexical) can be generated by use of the more complex frames +___(F)^V. Optional control infinitives are selected by +__(GOAL)^V (see section 4.5.3), and optional control gerunds by +___(D)^V. Keep in mind that this chapter deals with semi-clauses that have internal subjects required by Anti-transitivity, and not with participles, which are treated in chapters 4 and 6.

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By Fewest Words then, gerunds are a more economical and hence preferred realization of semi-clause XP selected by +__V or +__F^V. Indeed, among the English verbs with the lexical feature +__V, many do select object DP gerunds of obligatory control, as illustrated in (5-5): admit, avoid, embrace, neglect, repeat, reject, undertake, etc. Such gerunds are thus the minimal well-formed Extended Projections headed by V.24 Therefore, Fewest Words (2-38b) prefers gerunds to infinitives, all else being equal. But another factor (all else is not equal) sometimes nullifies this choice.

5.7.1 When is case available to semi-clause complements? As in most current generative syntax, I assume that DPs must have a “Case Feature” assigned by an adjacent head: either I (for “nominative”), V (for “accusative”), P (for “oblique”), or some category within DP (for “genitive”).25 This requirement is called the Case Filter. As seen just above, when case-marking is available, gerunds are always allowed and preferred to infinitives for semi-clause subjects, direct objects and objects of Ps. (Lexical entries often stipulate a specific P: aim at, argue about/ over, decide on, limit to, prepare for, think about/ of/ over.) There are nonetheless some obligatory control complements where grammatical case is not available for a DP gerund. When a verb, as underlined below, selects both a direct object (often animate) and a semi-clause, the verb assigns case to the direct object, so there is no case-assigner for a second DP (gerund) complement. The second, semi-clause complement can then only surface as an infinitive. (5-72)

The elections caused the banks to lower interest rates/ *lowering interest rates. John’s friend forced him to pay back the loan /*paying back the loan. Gala inspired Dali to buy a castle/ *buying a castle.

24 Gerunds with optionally overt internal subjects are an expansion of English DPs, similar to Complex Event Nominals. Consequently, predicates whose subjects or objects are compatible with semantic Events can contain gerunds of optional control: (Mary’s) being robbed upset us; Mary’s father condemned (Jim’s) buying so many clothes. 25 There is no need to retain the traditional case labels formally; when alternatively realized on their sister DPs, the case-assigning categories I, V, P and D/N are the traditional cases (Emonds 1985: ch. 5). There are conflicting views on which categories inside DP assign genitive, but this is outside the scope of this work.

5.7 Additional features in verbal clauses or gerunds  

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Usually, to-infinitival complements, being based on the sequence DIR^VP, lead to an Irrealis interpretation of the VP; cf. section 4.2.2. Yet the examples (5-72) all imply a Realis interpretation; here the DIR constituent to serves only to make VP a selectable Extended Projection. It is comparable to semantically empty Ps that only assign case, without contributing to interpretation, as in description of the act; dislike of this job. Čakanyová (2018) provides another set of examples where infinitival to appears to not be interpreted as Irrealis. These involve semi-clause complements of certain adjectives, which in the absence of a stipulated P in a complement, do not assign case. (5-73)

Ann was happy to get home at all/ *getting home at all. We were very relieved to reach a hospital/ *reaching a hospital. Henry was angry to hear his account was empty/ *hearing his account was empty.

As she points out, the complements of these particular Adjectives must be Realis. Because of the lack of a Case-assigner, a more economical gerund complement is not available, so the preceding examples use an infinitive, which needs no case.

5.7.2 Features incompatible with selection of DP gerunds When Anti-transitivity (see section 4.5.4) forces a semi-clause to have an internal subject, that is, to be an infinitive or a gerund, it can happen that a gerund, which is a DP, is independently incompatible with a selectional frame +___F^V, because the feature F cannot occur as a constituent of a DP. Three such cases commonly arise: (5-74) Selectional features of heads Y requiring infinitives i. F = DIR, and Y obligatorily selects Irrealis semi-clauses: Y, +__DIR^V ii. F = WH, and Y selects indirect questions: Y, +__WH^V iii. F = GOAL, and Y selects for-to clauses: Y, +__GOAL^V or Y, +__GOAL Since DPs can’t be projections of the Fs in these frames, the latter necessarily result in to-infinitives, of the form DIR^VP, WH^VP or GOAL^V. Infinitives are thus typical with predicates whose complements require Extended Projections that are something more than just a minimal V-headed phrase.

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 5 Gerunds vs. infinitives: Less alike than they look

I now formally define the symbol ^ in subcategorization so that the notations in (5-74) correspond to what seem intuitively to be extensions of the simple frames ___X. (5-75) Features added to subcategorized phrasal complements26 The symbol +___F^X, as in (5-74), means that the maximal phrase that satisfies + ___X is immediately dominated by a larger phrase whose head is +F. As an example, consider a verb such as hear (hear from a friend), which plausibly comes from a lexical frame +___ SOURCE^ANIM. The feature +___ANIM licenses an Animate DP object, analogously to transitive verbs like frighten and amuse. Then the added feature SOURCE^ licenses a larger phrase with the feature SOURCE which immediately dominates the selected DP. The selected complement of hear is thus correctly a PP headed by a [P, SOURCE] (from) followed by an Animate DP. With this mechanism in mind, let us review the three cases in (5-74). (i) The feature DIR (interpreted as Irrealis). The bare frame +___V selects either participles or gerunds (depending on Anti-Transitivity, as seen in the previous chapter), either temporal aspect verbs (be, begin, resume, stop) or standard transitive verbs (avoid, discuss, reveal, undertake). But many similar verbs (as well as some nouns and adjectives) either optionally or obligatorily select infinitives: some temporal aspect verbs of incomplete action (begin, continue, go on, start) and many transitives: decide, fail, hesitate, hope, neglect, try, want. (5-76)

a.

The neighbors might begin/ continue/ go on/ start to watch baseball games. b. They decided/ failed/ hesitated/ hoped/ wanted to find/ *finding a new home.

The intrinsic semantics of the verbs in (5-76b) imply that their complements refer to unrealized events. Since the DIR of the infinitival marked [P to] expresses Irrealis (the unattained Goals of Duffley and Abida 2009), the appropriate lexical frame for these verbs is thus not simply +__V but rather the augmented Irrealis frame +__DIR^V. In this situation, the infinitival structure (4-9) of chapter 4

26 Chomsky (1965: ch. 2) gives many examples of such composite subcategorizations, presumably to illustrate the great variety in lexical co-occurrence frames.

5.7 Additional features in verbal clauses or gerunds  

 191

(decide to watch games) has less phrasal and morphemic complexity than a gerund introduced by to (*decide to watching games), and so in both Middle and Modern English is more economical and wins out. Notice that gerunds cannot economically satisfy the frames in (5-74i) because the feature Irrealis does not appear on either lexical or functional heads of a DP. Hence the economical realizations for Irrealis complements of both intransitives (decide, fail, promise, try) and transitives (convince, encourage, remind, persuade) use infinitives with the feature DIR, as in (5-77): (5-77)

VP V

(DP)

PP P, DIR

decide, fail, try convince, remind

Ø

to

VP dress up for the party

his kids

(ii) The feature WH for indirect questions. Quite a few verbs can select indirect question complements, which are introduced by a head with the feature WH. Their finite variants are introduced by if and whether, which spell out the features [P, WH]. No such category can introduce either participial or gerund structures, respectively (4-11) and (4-12) in chapter 4. (5-78) a.

The couple asked/ explained/ knew where to find/ *finding a safer street. b. She reminded/ told her son how to choose/ *choosing an apartment.

Infinitival structures can thus be extended to accommodate selection of WH, so that the frame +__WH^V selects complements as in (5-78). As earlier, I assume that C-IP is a special case of P-IP (Emonds 1985: ch. 7), so indirect questions have the structure of a PP. Since there is no place for a WH feature in a DP projection of a gerund, infinitival structure as in (5-79) is the most economical realization of +___WH^V in (5-74ii):

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 5 Gerunds vs. infinitives: Less alike than they look

(5-79)

PP P,WH

whether

PP DP

P

Ø

to

VP dress up for the party

The selectional frame __P,WH ( =__C,WH) can be satisfied only in verbal clauses, by either a finite IP complement or by a V-headed PP complement of P,WH.27 Chomsky (1981) notes that infinitival indirect questions require obligatory control (= infinitives with empty DP subjects). The reason the DP in (5-79) must be empty is that the complementizers whether and if cannot assign case, similar to other subordinating conjunctions P such as though, unless, while, etc. An interesting confirmation of this feature system for selecting semi-clauses is provided by making WH optional in the basic frame +___ WH^V for indirect questions (we wondered whether to dress up for the party), yielding the feature +___(WH)^V. This minimal modification can fully describe an otherwise curious alternation of semi-clause complements found with verbs such as describe, discuss and recall. If WH is not chosen, Word Economy (2-38b) forces the frame +___V to be realized by a direct object gerund: (5-80)

They described/ discussed/ recalled dressing up for the party. *They described/ discussed/ recalled to dress up for the party.

But if instead the WH in the selection frame is chosen, the realization can no longer be a gerund (because a DP lacks a WH position) but is rather the infinitive structure (5-79). (5-81) *They described/ discussed/ recalled how/ when dressing up for the party. They described/ discussed/ recalled how/ when to dress up for the party. This complex disjunctive pattern of complement selection falls out naturally from the system here built around one basic frame +__V for verbal clause complements.

27 This reverses my earlier unmotivated assumptions that finite and non-finite indirect questions have the same structure.

5.7 Additional features in verbal clauses or gerunds  

 193

(iii) The feature selecting for-to clauses. Let us now see how the selectional feature in (5-74iii) excludes gerunds and leads instead to infinitives. The frame __ GOAL^V means that the GOAL feature on P, spelled for, and a phrasal projection with a head V together form a sister of a selecting head. This exactly describes the typically English infinitive structure given earlier as (5-8), with either overt or covert subject DPs. PP

(5-8)

PP

P,GOAL

for Ø

DP

P,DIR

him/ her husband

to

introduce himself

to

introduce herself

Ø

VP

Since there is no place for a GOAL feature in a DP projection of a gerund, the infinitival structure (5-8) is the only economical way to satisfy the frame +__GOAL^V. That is, the required concatenation of a GOAL feature with a V-headed Extended Projection (PP) causes the infinitive to again “win out” over the gerund as satisfying the subcategorization (5-74iii).28 As listed in Rosenbaum (1967), verbs with such complements include arrange, beg, hope, pray, wait, as well as a second group hate, like, prefer and want. In fact, the first group has a more general selection frame, +___GOAL^X, since arrange, beg, hope, pray, wait are also well-formed with for-DP (5-82a-b). In contrast, the second group accepts a GOAL phrase only if the complement is not a DP (5-82c-d): (5-82)

a. b. c. d.

We can arrange/ hope/ wait for a useful meeting. We can arrange/ hope/ wait for Sam to arrive. Boris would hate/ like/ want very much (for Ivan) to bring his own guitar. *Boris would hate/ like/ want very much for a new guitar.

28 One might ask if a lower subject DP between for and VP in (5-8) somehow conflicts with the notation ___GOAL^V in the selection feature of a higher verb. The only relevant requirement on an intervening DP is Full Interpretation (see note 23), which this DP satisfies by virtue of being interpreted as VP’s subject. The configuration (5-8) satisfies the selection feature +__GOAL^V, because the P for and the VP projection constitute a single sister of the higher V.

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 5 Gerunds vs. infinitives: Less alike than they look

Just as with the feature WH, for some verbs the GOAL feature in (5-74iii) can be lexically and hence semantically optional. The frame +__(GOAL)^V is found with verbs such as like, prefer, hate and undertake:29 (5-83) a.

Choosing GOAL yields infinitives: He liked/ prefers/ hates to dress for parties. b. No GOAL feature yields gerunds: He liked/ prefers/ hates dressing for parties.

I have now explained how to-infinitives are selected as complements in English. They result from the same basic frame +___V as gerunds, but come to be required when such an argument simultaneously expresses some other feature like DIR, WH, or GOAL.

5.8 Semi-clause complements that are neither subjects nor objects This section examines the syntax of several classes of English clausal complements which are interpreted not as subjects or as object DPs, but are generated and interpreted in VP-final position. Such complements undermine a presupposition of much early generative grammar, namely that natural language should or might well have properties of formal logic, so that embedded propositions are arguments of predicates, and that natural language canonically expresses arguments as noun phrases. Consequently, Rosenbaum (1967) and Ross (1967) took it as marked or unusual, or as something to be explained away, if patterns of verbal clauses turned out to conflict with typical noun phrase behavior. This line of a priori thinking has lingered on, and I want to show that a wide range of semiclause patterns discredit it. With respect to word order, non-nominal verbal clauses in English must follow any direct or indirect object DPs of verbs, as do other PPs, APs or VPs. Most verbal clauses do not even alternate with DPs. And there are considerably more such clauses than often thought; here is a list of complement clauses that are not DPs:

29 It is an elusive task to express in exact words how the sense of the infinitives in (5-83a) is “less Realis” than the sense of the gerunds in (5-83b), yet some native speakers feel that a difficult-to-describe semantic nuance distinguishes the two sets of examples.

5.8 Semi-clause complements that are neither subjects nor objects  

 195

(5-84) English Verbal Clause Complements (neither DPs nor associates of expletives) a. Raising infinitives (section 5.1.3), b. Semi-clause complements that are third arguments of transitive verbs such as cause, force, inspire, or complements of adjectives, c. Complements selected by +__(F)^V, when F is unavailable inside DP (5-74), d. Finite complements of verbs with expletive subjects: happen, seem, turn out. e. Finite complements of manner of speaking verbs.30 a. Infinitive complements of “Raising” verbs. We saw in section 5.1.3 that Raising complements (5-84a), selected by predicates such as appear, believe, find, happen, be likely, seem and turn out, are necessarily in extraposition, because the selecting verb’s subject or object positions themselves are occupied by DPs interpreted rather as subjects of these infinitives. These complements fail all tests for DP constituency, such as passivization, topicalization, and focusing in clefts. (5-85) Some student happened to see the crash. *To see the crash was happened by some student. *To see the crash some student happened. *It was to see the crash that some student happened. Therefore, these raising infinitives can’t be in DP positions, so they are not DPs. For more extensive analysis of these constructions, see Wurmbrand (2001). b. Third arguments of transitive verbs. Many different verbs select clausal complements in addition to subject and object DPs, and so these verbs cannot simply select gerunds, just as English Gerund Distribution (5-21) predicts. Consequently, these verbal clause arguments, underlined below, must remain in non-DP (and non-case-marked) positions throughout derivations. (5-86)

A guest persuaded the management to improve the service. Our friends forced us to leave right away.

30 Infinitive complements of many manner of speaking verbs are interpreted as embedded imperatives: A guest whispered to Harry to move over; A bystander shouted to shoot the assailant. Emonds (2000: ch. 10) analyzes these embedded imperatives in more detail.

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 5 Gerunds vs. infinitives: Less alike than they look

The concert inspired me to buy season tickets. *A guest persuaded the management improving the service. *Our friends forced us leaving right away. * The concert inspired me buying season tickets. The starred underlined VPs with –ing are excluded as gerunds because no V or P is available to assign them case, and excluded as participles because of Anti-transitivity of Theta-Relatedness. For example, items in each of the three pairs {inspire, me}, {inspire, buy} and {me, buy} are Theta-Related. c. Complements selected by +__(F)^V, such as F = Irrealis. Even though these complements follow otherwise transitive verbs as in (5-87i), they never have DP patterns: (5-87) i.

A teacher often hopes to satisfy a class. Some residents tried to fix their plumbing. ii. Passivization, an operation on DP, fails for infinitives (Stowell 1981): *To satisfy a class is often hoped by a teacher. *To fix the plumbing was tried by some residents. iii. Topicalization fails for the same reason: *To satisfy a class a teacher often hopes. *To fix their plumbing some residents tried. iv. Focusing in cleft sentences, another operation on DP, also fails: *It’s to satisfy a class that a teacher often hopes. *It was to fix their plumbing that some residents tried.

d. Finite complements of verbs with expletive subjects. Since these complements cannot appear in the DP positions of the expletives (unlike extraposed subject clauses), they also are unrelated to any DP position. (5-88)

It seems to me that we are late. *That we are late seems to me. It finally turned out that Chicago won. *That Chicago won finally turned out. It might happen that he gets fired. *That he gets fired might happen.

The reader can verify that the underlined complements fail to passivize, topicalize, or appear as the focus in cleft sentences.

5.8 Semi-clause complements that are neither subjects nor objects  

 197

e. Finite complements of manner of speaking verbs (Zwicky 1971). Since I have not been dealing much with finite complements, I exemplify (5-84e) in more detail. (5-89)

Harold whispered that night was falling. Some kid shrieked that Manchester had scored two goals. One guest growled to the waiter that an hour was too long.

These clausal complements occur only at the end of VP, where a V selects them as a sister. They can neither be topicalized nor passivized (showing they are not DPs), nor focused in cleft sentences. (5-90)

Clausal complements of Zwicky’s manner-of-speaking communication verbs cannot undergo passive: *That night was falling was whispered (by Harold). *That Manchester had scored two goals was shrieked (by some kid). *That an hour was too long was growled to the waiter (by one guest).

(5-91) Nor can passivization apply to putative DP expletives in object position: *It was whispered (by Harold) that night was falling. *It was shrieked (by some kid) that Manchester had scored two goals. *It was growled to the waiter (by one guest) that an hour was too long. (5-92) Nor can these manner-of-speaking verbal clauses be topicalized: *That night was falling Harold whispered. *That Manchester had scored two goals some kid shrieked. *That an hour was too long one guest growled to the waiter. (5-93) Nor can they be focused in cleft sentences: *It was that night was falling that Harold whispered. *It was that Manchester had scored two goals that some kid shrieked. *It was that an hour was too long that one guest growled. Hence, the verbal clause complements to the verbs in (5-89) are uniformly not DP at any derivational level. Rather, clausal complements of manner-of-speaking verbs must be final in the VP and so always follow any indirect object PP. Zwicky’s descriptive generalization is that these clausal complements never act like object noun phrases (DPs), a conclusion robustly supported in his work and by the data above. Note that manner of speaking verbs contrast with many epistemic and emotive verbs (admit, believe, conclude, fear, know, realize, regret, etc.), whose comple-

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 5 Gerunds vs. infinitives: Less alike than they look

ments, as seen in section 5.6, are bound by phonetically null expletives in object position. These DP expletives can then move to subject position by passivization, where they asymmetrically bind their associate, the verbal complement in extraposition. As a result of movement upwards to subject, the expletive DPs must become overt it, as Associate-Expletive Binding (5-66) requires: (5-94)

a.

Harold admitted/ believed/ feared [DP Ø] that night was falling. It was admitted/ believed/ feared (by Harold) that night was falling. b. Some fans concluded/ thought [DP Ø] that Manchester had scored two goals. It was concluded/ thought (by some fans) that Manchester had scored two goals. c. One guest felt/ realized [DP Ø] that an hour was too long. It was felt/ realized (by one guest) that an hour was too long.

If the verbal complements of these epistemic and emotive transitive verbs are in pre-subject position, as is allowed in main clauses, they asymmetrically bind expletives in object position, which must then remain null, by (5-66ii):31 (5-95) That night might fall soon Harold had to admit/refused to believe [DP Ø]. That Boston had gone ahead many fans still thought/ already concluded [DP Ø]. That an hour was too long at least one guest already knew/realized [DP Ø]. It would be tedious to again apply the above DP diagnostics to every class of complement in (5-84). The topicalization and cleft focus tests, when applied to the rest of the subclasses of complements, fully replicate the results above, namely that none of the verbal clause complement classes in (5-84) satisfy DP diagnostics. None of these clausal complements of verbs, the arguments of these verbs in Logical Form, have any syntactic relation at all with the category DP. Collectively, they show that DPs in syntax are in no way systematic counterparts of “arguments” in symbolic logic.

31 The pragmatic felicity of such topicalized object clauses often requires various adverbs, modals, or other modifiers. Investigating such requirements is beyond the scope of this volume.

5.9 Summary and implications 

 199

5.9 Summary and implications This chapter has systematically surveyed the positions and grammatical properties of English gerunds and to-infinitives. These are the semi-clause types that have internal structural subjects, and hence differ from the participles studied in chapters 4 (actives) and 6 (passives), whose obligatory subjects can be in a higher clause. We have seen that even though their internal forms are sometimes similar, they assume very different syntactic positions, and because of their category distinction (gerunds being DPs and to-infinitives PPs), each type can be expanded and elaborated in ways unavailable to the other. This research has thus improved on traditional and generative treatments of clausal complementation, which have previously failed to isolate the factors that actually predict the very different distributions of gerunds and infinitives. The detailed analysis of English semi-clauses of this chapter has concentrated on their distinct syntactic distributions as complements, treating subjects and adjuncts in less detail. According to the many syntactic diagnostics and empirical patterns examined here, these two differently structured clauses exhibit entirely different, almost disjoint, syntactic behaviors. Gerunds act like noun phrases and infinitives do not. A central part of the overall analysis rests on gerunds being morphologically the more economical way to satisfy a frame requiring a verbheaded extended projection, selected by +__V or +__D^V. Infinitives arise as complements only when (i) some feature (DIR, WH, GOAL) specified in a selection frame must accompany a complement clause, or (ii) Case for a second complement is lacking. These infinitives, as well as finite clause complements, thus have nothing to do with the syntax or selection of the category DP. Moreover, these verbal clause complements undergo movement neither in the larger clause inside which they originate nor out of that clause. Unlike clauses interpreted via expletives in DP argument positions, seen in (5-94), all the clausal complements selected by the verb classes in (5-74) and (5-84) are generated only in the clause-final position where they are lexically selected and not elsewhere. As a final consideration, one can address the question of why generative analyses have so persistently tried to treat all verbal clause complements (infinitival VPs, finite IPs and CPs/ PPs) as some kind of noun phrase, despite massive evidence that these clauses are not DPs at all, and only in a few cases are even co-indexed with pronouns. I attribute this tendency in both generative and traditional grammar to a long-standing attempt to model clausal embedding in terms of embedded predication in symbolic logic. The “arguments” of predicates in logic are felt to correspond to noun phrases (DPs), so that if some “proposition” (verbal clause) is an argument of a higher predicate, then that clause seems like it must also be a DP. As a justification for grammatical analysis, such thinking

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 5 Gerunds vs. infinitives: Less alike than they look

has been misguided and fatally simplistic, as shown not only by the syntactic properties of the many constructions in (5-84), but also by the many other paradigmatic contrasts between DP gerunds and non-DP verbal clauses provided in this chapter’s early sections. As a conclusion, it seems appropriate to list the structural contexts where English semi-clauses occur as arguments of higher predicates, and to summarize which of the two forms occur or don’t occur in them, and why. Some marked variants are allowed by additional features F that elaborate on the main selectional frame +___(F)^V. (5-96)

Positions of embedded semi-clause VP arguments with internal subjects i. Subject relation to a verb; as these are unselected, optional control is available. a. In all DP positions: Gerunds. b. In Topicalized root position: Infinitives and Finite Clauses (like PPs). ii. Object relation to a verb or other head; the unmarked case is obligatory control. a. In all DP positions: Gerunds. b. If an F specified as WH, DIR, or GOAL precedes VP, then an infinitive is required. Optional control is allowed if F is the GOAL casemarker. c. If F = D, this gives rise to a gerund of optional control. iii. Second complement to a verb: an infinitive, unless embedded in a selected PP; these always have obligatory control.

In spite of the variations caused by the different but limited ways that a lexical entry can specify F in its selection frame, a very regular pattern of English semiclauses has emerged. If an internal subject is needed (due to the Anti-transitivity of chapter 4), then a gerund, which lacks the Irrealis feature, is chosen whenever it can be. To-infinitives then constitute the less economic elsewhere case for satisfying +___(F)^V.

6 English passive structures and the passive participle 6.1 The analytic passives of English and their dethematized subjects This chapter explores the structure and interpretation of English passives.1 We will first examine the characteristic properties of verbal and adjectival passives, as illustrated in (6-1) below: (6-1) a. Carole was driven directly to the airport (by her father). (verbal) b. She seemed unconcerned with arriving on time. (adjectival) I will moreover propose that English includes a third type of “indirect passive” that is distinct from either of the two traditional types. For example: (6-2) Marilyn had/ got/ wanted her teeth cleaned last week. The final sections discuss the wider implications of my analysis for grammatical theory.

6.1.1 Analytic and periphrastic characteristics of English passives Perhaps the first task in any work on passives is to set down what this elusive term is meant to cover. Keenan’s (1985) broad but quite detailed overview insists that passives are operations on verb phrases rather than on sentences (1985: 247) for which a characteristic morphological marking is central (1985: 251). This result is concisely summarized in (6-3), all of which is cited from Åfarli (1992: 8). (6-3)

Essential properties of the passive. Every sentence one might reasonably want to call a passive may be minimally characterized as follows:

1 Material in this chapter’s first section summarizes and considerably shortens the first section of Emonds (2017b), in accord with the present volume being mainly concerned with English. Nonetheless, it is of interest that English and Spanish passive syntax is similar, and contrasts with a wider range of passives in French and German, in particular the “impersonal passives” that English and Spanish lack. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110734379-007

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 6 English passive structures and the passive participle

a.

Relative to its active counterpart, the passive sentence is marked with special verb morphology. b. The subject of the active sentence never remains subject in the passive counterpart. This characterization of passives stresses the link between passive morphology and its relation to (the Theta Role of) subject phrases in active clauses. The general property of passives in (6-3b) can be called “dethematization of subjects”: either suppressing DPs which would be subjects in actives or forcing them to appear post-verbally.2 Åfarli goes on to cite Keenan (1985a: 251) who “distinguishes between two broad types of passive according to the verbal morphology involved: periphrastic passives, which by definition make use of a passive auxiliary verb, and strict morphological passives, which do not.” Periphrastic passives are often called “analytic” and strict morphological passives “synthetic”. Synthetic passives are not part of the grammar of English and so won’t be discussed in this chapter.3 In order to characterize dethematization in English, one must investigate the structure of its periphrastic or “analytic” passives. They consist of an auxiliary and a non-finite form of the main verb. This non-finite form is called the passive participle. As we will see, all the subtypes of English passives use this participle, and in this sense are analytic in nature, as also are those of the closely related systems of French, German, and Spanish. In the examples (6-4), the usual place of the subject (underlined) contains either a noun phrase with the semantic role of what would otherwise be the main verb’s object, or some dummy pronoun, an overt or null “expletive” (it, there, Ø). The passive auxiliaries are in plain font and the non-finite main verbs are in bold: (6-4) a.

The door was {repainted/ taken off} by the tenant. John’s needs are getting {satisfied/ written down}. It might be concluded that Mary is ill.

2 The dethematization approach to passives, whose formal basis is laid out in section 6.1.3, is due to Roberts (1987). 3 For several decades, generative grammar hardly touched on synthetic passives, but that has changed. Kallulli (1999) analyzes both the semantics and syntax of synthetic non-active Albanian verbs; recent studies on Hebrew passives (Horvath and Siloni 2008; Meltzer-Asscher 2011) base their argumentation on comparing and contrasting its synthetic verbal passives and analytic adjectival passives. Consequently, the present study’s claims about passives in familiar Indo-European languages are not meant to extend to the “auxiliary-less” synthetic passives of, for example, Albanian, Arabic, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Japanese or Latin.

6.1 The analytic passives of English and their dethematized subjects 

b.

 203

Few students were {represented by lawyers/ satisfied with the results}. There could be seen in the crowd only a few women. [That the weather would deteriorate]i Øi did not get reported.

The non-finite passive participle thus combines a verbal stem with a suffix, yielding complex analytic passives such as be repaint-ed, be tak-en, get satisfi-ed, get writt-en. Without auxiliaries, passive participles (underlined) can also function as adjuncts in (a) DPs (often called reduced relatives) and (b) VPs (also called subject complements): (6-5) a. b.

Students known as cheaters have a big disadvantage. They sent the tourists already vaccinated against typhus in for X-rays. The governor walked into the room escorted by bodyguards. He looked good young, covered with tattoos.

It will be important for the analysis in this chapter to recognize the strong justification for assigning the passive participle suffix to the category Adjective. – First, all English passive participles as in (6-5) are located in canonical positions of adjective phrases (APs), even when they are interpreted as verbs/ activities (the so-called verbal passives). These AP positions are either complements of verbs subcategorized to take AP (look, remain, seem, be, etc.), or as seen in (6-6), adjuncts at the end of NPs and VPs, where adjectives can independently appear. For discussion of these points, see Freidin (1975). (6-6) [NP Messages to them full of anger] kept arriving daily. Kamala [VP walked up to the mike ready to debate]. –

Second, like other APs, passive participles never serve as subjects (6-7a), as objects of P (6-7b), or as the focus phrase in English cleft sentences(6-7c): (6-7)

–

a. *Constantly nauseous/ *Taken to the hospital scared Bill. b. *They talked about arrested by the police. *We decided on vaccinated against the measles. c. *It was dizzy that Susan felt. *It was insulted by the nurse that Susan felt.

Third, at least in the analytic passives of the Germanic and Romance languages under consideration here, passive participles always morphologically agree

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 6 English passive structures and the passive participle

with their subjects exactly like other APs: in English, not at all; in German, only pre-nominally, and in French and Spanish, in all positions. These three independent arguments show that in English and several similar languages, the passive suffix –en is of category A (Adjective), with the word-internal structure [A V – [A en]]. Even though preceding treatments of the passive often mention this status, the category A has not been the keystone that explains the passive’s essential properties, as it is in Freidin (1975) and will be here. Because of the suffix’s distinctive phonological form in many irregular English verbs (broken, done, eaten, flown, gone, written), it is usually notated as -en, even though its regular form is spelled -ed. This distinguishes it from the conventional notation -ed for representing the finite past tense, as discussed at some length in chapter 2. For more on the internal structure of passive participles and adjectives, see Sleeman (2011) and McIntyre (2012).

6.1.2 Structural Subjects across categories In order to account for the essential passive property (6-3b), we need a clear structural notion of “Subject”. I feel that the most inclusive and empirically justified definition, valid for a wide range of subcases, can be based on that in Emonds (2000: ch. 2).4 Because this volume is focused on verbs, the first formal definition of subject in (4-48) was restricted to the category V. But it will be necessary in this chapter to also speak of subjects of adjectives, requiring a more general statement. (6-8) Subjects across Categories: The subject of a lexical head X is the lowest projection of D which c-commands some phrasal projection of X within a minimal containing DP or IP. If a lexical category X does not project to a phrase (e. g. inside a compound), or if there is no such DP, then the notion “Subject of X” is not defined.5 As a non-obvious example of how (6-8) works, consider a head verb in a for-to clause: it projects to VP and then to an infinitival PP headed by to. To have an overt (case-marked) subject, this PP must be embedded in another PP headed 4 The formulation given in Emonds (2000: ch. 2) is as follows: Definition of Subject. The Subject of a lexical category is the lowest DP c-commanding that category that is outside its lowest projection and inside all the same DP and IP. 5 Recall that the widely used symbol CP is here a special case of the structure [PP P – IP].

6.1 The analytic passives of English and their dethematized subjects 

 205

by for, as discussed in section 4.5.3. The DP sister of this for is the lowest in any larger DP or IP containing the infinitive, and so is its subject. The reason why Number Agreement does not apply in infinitives is because it directly depends on the category I, which is absent in all semi-clauses. (6-9) Number Agreement. A structural Subject DP agrees with a head I in Number, the value of ±PLUR. In Romance, a Subject also agrees with a head A in Number. In order to account for passive structures, it is important to understand that in a passive clausal structure DP . . . [AP [A V – [A en]]]. . . ., the DP is the subject of the A suffix –en and its projections (as evidenced by overt adjectival and participial agreement in for instance Romance), and not of its verbal host. The passive verb in this structure, unless this structure is somehow altered, has no subject because this V does not project to a VP.

6.1.3 Suppression of active subjects (= Dethematization) The essential property of passives in (6-3b) is not best captured by some derivational “demotion” or “lowering” of deep subjects of active clauses, because, as many authors (Kratzer 1994; 2000; Embick 2004a; Anagnostopoulou 2003; Horvath and Siloni 2008) show, in an important subtype of adjectival lexical passives in many languages, no external argument position or agent Theta Role is ever part of their derivation. (Dethematization of a role cannot result from an operation on an item that is never present.) This result raises a central question. (6-10) Defining question on passives. Why is the subject position in any type of analytic passive ineligible for receiving a Theta Role directly from a lexical verb? The answer to this question plays a key role in explaining what forces apparent movement of an object DP (or expletive insertion) into subject positions of familiar passive clauses like (6-4). In terms of Government and Binding (Chomsky 1981), what makes the subject in a passive clause into a “Theta Bar” or “No Theta Role” position? The previous subsection provides the basis of the answer. Contrary to what occurs in active clauses, the subject DP of a passive phrase cannot receive a Theta

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Role from a verb, which is the essential property (6-3b), because it is not the V’s subject, even though it is the subject of I (and agrees in features with an I). The answer to (6-10) thus crucially involves the relation between the definition of Subject (6-8) and the internal structure of an analytic passive VP. The V in a passive participle is not the head of the participle, and hence does not project to a phrase, so it has no subject, just like verbs in collocations like a give away,a think tank, a sell order or a buy out have no subject. Rather, as seen in section 6.1.1, because passive participle suffixes are in the lexical category A which projects to AP, this A is the only candidate for having a subject in a passive clause. It is therefore because of this suffix, which is the special passive morphology of (6-3a), that dethematization (6-3b) holds. This second passive property, which is an accidental correlation of (6-3a) in the Åfarli-Keenan formulation, thus turns into a predicted consequence of accurately defining “Subject”. (6-11)

XP DP

…

Subject of A, not V

AP A

V lexical verb

DP A -en

…

Ø intervening head A causes dethematization

Keep in mind that by (6-8), the dotted line in (6-11) can contain no DP or IP. A structure minimally different with respect to the definition of subject is that of the active past participle with the perfect auxiliary have, namely [V,TENSE V– [TENSE en]]. Empirically, an active perfect participle never seems to affect other aspects of clause-internal syntax, that is, its suffix doesn’t constitute a lexical head between the main verb and the subject DP. Formally, the definition of Subject (6-8) makes exactly this prediction, because the category TENSE of –en is not a lexical category X in (6-8), and so the higher feature bundle V,TENSE is the projecting head X0 which has a subject. According to Number Agreement (6-9), the morphology of passive participles in languages with overt adjectival agreement (for example, Romance) independently confirms my answer to the defining question for passives (6-10). That is, in analytic passives, the participial suffixes in these languages (counterparts to English –en): – always agree with the subject DP in any passive construction; these “–en” express the subject’s φ-features (such as gender and number), but

6.1 The analytic passives of English and their dethematized subjects 

–

 207

never agree with the subject DP in active composed/ periphrastic pasts; these “-en” lack the subject’s φ -features.

Thus a subject DP of an active participial phrase YP can be grammatically related to the lexical verb stem V of the suffixal head [TENSE –en] because the latter is not a lexical category. In passive participles by contrast, the potential agreement of [A –en] with its subject DP excludes any relation between this DP and V. The morphological adjectival agreement of any subtype of passive participles thus excludes Theta Role assignment by a V-stem to the subject of any periphrastic passive clause. This is what explains “dethematization.” This answer to Question (6-10) is based on the premise that φ-features expressing adjectival agreement are present in narrow syntax and the LF of predicate adjectives. This means that the agreement of predicate adjectives is not simply a whimsical aspect of PF, but is probably to be subsumed under the LF Binding Principle A (Chomsky 1981: ch. 3) for interpreting bound anaphors. Emonds (2012c) gives an independent justification for this conception of predicate adjective agreement. This analysis has now accounted for Åfarli’s “essential property of the passive” (6-3b) by using the formal definition of the grammatical relation of subject. The crucial “dethematization” of the external argument position in all uses of passive phrases is therefore due to their lexicalized head A, that is, their adjectival suffix blocks any grammatical relation between the V stem and their subject DP. Nothing in this explanation of dethematization requires reference to any special passive feature or rule, once one utilizes the category of the predicate adjective -en in narrow syntax (and LF).6 6.1.4 Excess predictive content of the definition of Subject We have just seen that the definition of Subject prevents a direct syntactic relation between a verbal host of a derivational adjectival suffix and the subject of this adjective. This result is transparently correct for forms with somewhat atypical 6 The reason this explanation has been a long time coming is the putative “division of labor” between “syntactic theorists” and “morphological specialists”, as advocated for example in Aronoff (1994: 134): “But within a lexeme-based framework in which morphology and syntax are autonomous, what Passive consists of syntactically is not directly relevant to its morphological realization . . . For my purposes, the question is just not interesting. Conversely, its morphology has no bearing on its syntax and should not be used as evidence for one syntactic analysis or another.” Aronoff’s methodology excludes this chapter’s approach a priori, and can use none of its explanations.

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suffixes such as –able and agentive –er, whose subjects are clearly not subjects of the verb stem: in I know Mary’s gardener, Sam is lovable: Mary is not the person gardening, nor Sam the person loving. We also want to see how the definition of subject (6-8) fares with more typical adjectives, where it seems confronted with prima facie disconfirmation. Consider the lexical adjectives formed by attaching -ive to V stems, such as attractive, corrosive, decisive, defensive, intrusive, selective, etc. Romance counterparts of these, like other adjectives, agree with their subjects: French masculine défensif(s) and feminine défensive(s).7 For many adjectives of this type the subjects of the adjective and of the V stem seem to be the same: whoever is decisive also decides, something/one that is defensive also defends, etc. But according to (6-8), the subjects of these APs cannot be directly related to these V stems as subjects, because the (φ-features of the agreeing) suffixes, for instance, English –ive, French [A -if/-ive], block this grammatical relation. And indeed, upon scrutiny, the selection restrictions on the subjects of corresponding Vs and As are actually different, suggesting that this prediction of (6-8) is correct. For one who receives visitors or gifts is not receptive, one who repels attacks is not repulsive, the subject DPs of selective and attractive must be animate, though the DP subjects for the corresponding verbs need not be. There is a sub-regularity, however; the adjective seems acceptable for a subset of cases where the verb stem can be used as a bare predicate. Thus in most cases, if “X is V-ive”, then typically “X V-s” even though the converse doesn’t hold. Plausibly, the lexical entry of a V with the suffixation frame < __ive> transmits its subject’s Theta Role, by a sort of “lexical redundancy rule,” to the subject of –ive. In this way, even though the subjects of corresponding A and V have the same Theta Roles, the adjective [A V-ive] selects its DP arguments and is grammatically related to them independently of V; in this, –ive is like –able. Consequently, the V itself in these adjectives is not directly related to a subject DP in, say, SPEC(IP). The definition of Subject (6-8) holds generally, so its use to explain all dethematization in passives in section 6.1.3 remains valid.

6.2 The relation between English passives and transitive verbs The participial suffix –en used in all English passives is of course itself a lexical item; its entry must specify among other things that it is a suffix on V. Moreover, as observed at the end of section 6.1.1, –en is an A (Adjective). This is further con7 English may well have corresponding covert agreement; for both empirical and theory-based arguments to this effect, see Emonds (2012b).

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firmed by the adjectival agreement inflections on structurally similar periphrastic passives in other languages. Besides its category and its lexical host, a passive suffix needs one additional feature F to set it off from the active participle suffix –ing. This feature should express another property of English passive structures: that some DP object in the XP whose head is V+en must be an empty category. That is, all English passives, including its adjectival passives, require that one object DP in the VP must be empty and co-indexed with the subject DP (cf. Levin and Rappaport 1986 and the next section).8 Formally, this needed characterizing feature/ category F of passive –en is that of the participle’s object DP sister. In passive structures, the object’s basic canonical feature D is also alternatively realized under the word-internal head A, and as required by AR (1-34), repeated here, the participle A and its DP object are sister constituents. (6-12)

Alternative Realization. A syntactic feature of a category can be spelled out outside its canonical position by a closed class item under another categoy, provided some projections of the two categories are adjacent sisters.

Recall that in unmarked AR configurations, the canonical position of the feature is null, and this indeed holds for some object DP in all English (and Spanish) passives. We thus arrive at a tentative lexical entry (6-13) for the passive inflection –en;9 see Emonds (2007: 279). (6-13)

Lexical entry for English passive participles (tentative). -en, A, D,

Putting together everything established up to this point, (6-14) is the structure for English passive participles, no matter which subtype of passive they appear in.

8 Spanish passives have this same requirement as English. However, in languages with “impersonal passives” (e.g. French, German, Norwegian, Ukrainian), this feature F on corresponding passive morphemes can be optional. In these languages, if (their version of) -en is inserted but F(=D) is not chosen no empty object DP results. Rather, the subject DP is then an expletive, and lexical object DPs remain “in situ” (Sobin 1985). 9 Since AR features are syntactic, and so are both A and the context feature , the lexical entry of the suffix -en has no purely semantic feature and so is a closed class item.

210  (6-14)

 6 English passive structures and the passive participle

Passive subjects, co-indexed (via D) with null objects of lexical verbs10 XP DP i

(The dotted line contains no DP or IP.)

Number Agreement

Passive subject

A, D i V

lexical verb

AP

AR

DP i

A, D i

Ø

…

-en

Thus, in addition to the dethematization in the passive of an active verb’s subject, its object DP, or one of them, is not overt in a complement position. In English (and Spanish), there is always a “gap” in a passive participle AP which is co-referential with its subject DP, as in (6-14). I thus argue that English –en alternatively realizes the functional category head D of this object DP.11 The passive suffix itself realizes no further features in English. Nothing requires that this object D even have phi-features.12 For example, section 5.8 has shown that the passivizable expletives it and Ø, as in (6-15), can have non-nominal clausal associates (bracketed below), and in general expletives lack any motivated phi-features. (6-15)

Nobody believed iti [that a president would talk like that]i. They brought iti to our attention [that the pipes were leaking]i. They suggested Øi to us [that Bill was correct]i. Several people explained Øi to her [how to do it]i.

10 Some authors refer to this prediction of AR here, that is, the necessarily empty DP in a passive VP, as “(Case) Absorption”, but this redundant term involves nothing beyond standard AR of the D feature. A reviewer notes that this account of passive co-indexing explains why Government and Binding “A-movement” (movement in passives) has different theory-internal properties than its less problematic “A-bar movement”. In the framework here, so-called “raising” verbs like seem in fact don’t involve movement either; see the discussion in section 5.1.3. The construct of “A-movement” is in this way eliminated. 11 There are at most a handful of idiomatic exceptions, where the D feature on –en is lexically stipulated rather than originating in object position: He was being born during an earthquake; The big game was rained out. 12 The analysis here thus differs from McA’Nulty (1983), Lefebvre (1988) and Emonds (2000: ch. 5), who all argue that French passive participle suffixes spell out the phi-features of the object DP. It may be that English and French differ in this point.

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Despite their lack of phi-features, these expletive DPs can be passivized, that is, they can be zeroed by a participial sister whose head –en alternatively realizes their feature D. (6-16) Iti wasn’t believed (by anybody) [that a president would talk like that]i. Iti was brought to our attention [that the pipes were leaking]i. Iti was suggested to us [that Bill was correct]i. Iti was explained Øi to her (by several people)[how to do it]i. Let us now consider the features in the entry (6-13) one by one: – The first category or feature F in a lexical entry always indicates F’s canonical position in trees; cf. section 2.3. Entry (6-13) thus specifies that passive –en occurs only (and freely) in canonical Adjectival positions.13 – Since A is not the canonical position of the next feature D, the D in (6-13) must alternatively realize a feature of a sister of an A projection, that is, a DP sister of the passive suffix participle. And exactly as argued above, the English passive participle using –en is always a sister of a null DP. – The notation refers to word-internal contexts (section 1.4.1), so that –en must also be a suffix on V. The suffixal head of AP complements in (6-13) can be selected by transitive as well as intransitive verbs; in such configurations, the (bold below) subject DPs of the passive forms are at the same time direct objects of V, though these objects and AP complements cannot both receive Theta Roles from V, due to Anti-Transitivity (4-61). (6-17)

consider the street sufficiently repaired/ safe for driving. declare Mary enrolled in the course/ guilty as charged. find the hostages tied up/ ill and unhappy.

As observed earlier, many Indo-European languages reflect the syntactic relation between a predicate adjective head A (here, the passive suffix) and its subject DP by overt number and gender agreement. The second agreement between these A and the object DP is the latter’s being alternatively realized by the lexical item –en; see again (6-14). Since a given D bears, or more accurately perhaps is, the referential index of a DP, these two agreements taken together

13 Although Activity Verbs can select APs, they are rarely passive participles: *wipe the table cleared of debris, *roast the meat dried of water, etc.

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imply that the subject and object DPs in an English or Spanish passive clause are co-referential.14 Putting the implications of these two agreements together thus derives what has long been considered the effects of a “movement property” of periphrastic passives in generative analyses, with no need to invoke or define any separate mechanism of passive phrasal movement, aka “A-Movement”. The co-reference of subject and object follows without stipulation from two independently justified formal co-indexations of wide application: predicate adjective agreement and Alternative Realization. This result constitutes this chapter’s first major simplification in the analysis of periphrastic passives.

6.3 Verbal vs. adjectival passives: distinct yet closely related Contributing to the uncertainty in the field about the extent of the passive construction is an interesting distinction, widely exemplified in Indo-European analytic passives, between what are termed verbal and adjectival passives. The construction most familiar from transformational literature is in fact “verbal passives,” as in (6-4a) and (6-18a). A second type of passive, homonymous with the first in English, is called “adjectival”, and is exemplified in (6-18b). (6-18) a.

Before my visit, that door was quickly taken off by the tenant. John’s needs are getting satisfied. b. At my arrival, that door was already completely taken off. John now seems very (un)satisfied.

Wasow (1977) draws several grammatical distinctions in English, which we will review, between the underlined verbal passives (6-18a) and adjectival passives (6-18b). A rough semantic characterization is that a verbal passive (6-18a) refers to an ongoing activity/ event, and an adjectival passive (6-18b) refers to an already attained state. Since adjectival passives have much in common with analytic verbal passives including often the same form, to properly identify them it is necessary to carefully empirically compare and contrast the two. Among the analytic passives, the adjectival variant certainly arrived later on the generative scene; only since the 14 The subject DP in passive clauses receives the same Theta Role as the empty co-indexed DP in object position. We can say that in fact the empty object receives a Theta Role, and that the co-indexed subject is interpreted only by virtue of binding it, just like a fronted wh-phrase is interpreted only by virtue of binding its clause-internal trace.

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study of Kratzer (1996) have they become a main focus of attention in syntactic analyses. Previously, the adjectival passive was confined to a relatively unexamined lexicon where its properties were supposedly relevant only to lexical semantics and of little interest to theoretical syntax.15 Yet more recent argumentation on adjectival passives suggests rather that it is the more basic and diachronically stable representative of the two types (for a review of this literature and its implications, see Emonds 2017b: section 7.2–7.3). The primacy of the adjectival passive actually seems somewhat obvious, given that the analytic passives of both Modern Greek (both of its types) and Hebrew are adjectival but not verbal. Hence, the adjectival passive is very likely the older and more basic of the two uses, and its properties are in no way simply secondary or “irregular.” In terms of syntactic treatment, this chapter will conclude, in accord with Anagnostopoulou (2003), Embick (2004a) and Breuning (2014), that both verbal and adjectival analytic passives are derived by the same syntactic process, the subject-object co-reference in section 6.2, previously described in generative grammar as transformational movement from object to subject. That is, I will show that both uses of passive participles relate in the same way to “NP movement” (Chomsky 1976) and that neither is connected to any lexical device, such as a lexical redundancy rule which changes how DP arguments of verbs are interpreted. In order to empirically support such a unified treatment, I outline the many superficial differences between the two constructions and identify what in these patterns actually distinguishes the two. Many of the differences in this section are therefore based on the early description in Wasow (1977).

6.3.1 An interpretive difference: Ongoing vs. completed activity A semantic property is taken in both traditional and generative grammar to distinguish two uses of passive participles. The verbal passives in (6-18a) and (6-19a) lack the sense of completed activity conveyed by the adjectival passives in (6-18b) and (6-19b): (6-19) a.

The door {got/was} closed during the noon hour. During lunch, music is played.

(door can be open at noon) (no completed sense )

15 For example, Jaeggli’s (1986) article “Passive” mentions adjectival passives only on the last page. Baker, Johnson, and Roberts’ (1989) treatise on the passive refers to them in the last footnote and cites no literature on the topic.

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 6 English passive structures and the passive participle

b. The door {remained/ appeared} closed (door closed by noon) during the noon hour. The door looked painted. (painting complete) Certain verbs are incompatible with this “completed sense” and hence do not appear in adjectival passives. As a result, such V can only be verbal passives; they cannot be selected as complements of verbs subcategorized as +___AP. (6-20) *New York appears (very) {approached /left} in the tourist season. *That good dinner felt {accompanied/ followed} by too much drink. *Many polluted cities remain {(un)avoided/ escaped} during the summer. *The clay looked (too) {handed around to students/ pressed into a bowl}. *The message seemed {slipped to the spy/ put in the drawer}. *Some basketballs sounded {dribbled across the floor/ thrown against the wall}. Three further verbs of this sort seem to be find, think, and transitive believe. Ever since Wasow’s study, it has been remarked that adjectival passives of these verbs are incompatible with so-called Raising to Object. (6-21)

*All over Germany, Hitler seemed believed to be the best leader. *Around noon, the trapped child felt found by the paramedics. ?Mary appears thought to be a genius.

But these verbs never readily accept adjectival passives, whatever their complements are: (6-22)

*All over Germany, Hitler seemed believed. *Around noon, the trapped child felt found. *Mary appears thought lost.

Thus, as Breuning (2014: sect. 3) claims, there is no special incompatibility between adjectival passives and Raising to Object. Rather, adjectival passives are excluded with the verbs in both (6-20) and (6-22) because these verbs are lexically incompatible with the interpretation of the suffix [A –en] as a resultant state. The sense of completed activity in (6-18b) and (6-19b) appears to be nothing more nor less than the characteristic Logical Form (LF) interpretation of the syntactic category A as a “property.” Moreover, “interpretation as a property” is

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 215

exactly what verbal passives lack.16 I thus propose the descriptive relation (6-23) between passive morphology and its presence or absence in LF interpretation. While the English suffix -en (Spanish –do/-da), is the right hand head (Lieber 1980) of all passive participles in Phonological Form (‘PF’), it is not always interpreted in LF: (6-23) Interpretation of the passive suffix: a. In adjectival passives, the PF suffix [A -en] is present on V throughout a derivation, including at LF. b. In verbal passives, the PF suffix [A -en] is absent in interpretation (at LF) and realized only at PF. The scheme in (6-23) proposes a simple dichotomy between verbal and adjectival passives. However, studies such as Emonds (2000: ch. 4, Anagnostopoulou (2003) and Embick (2004a) suggest a further division into two types of adjectival passives, lexical and syntactic, in addition to verbal passives. This chapter does not explore this refinement, but is limited to the clear distinction between verbal passives and all others, which is the same assumption that guided research until 2000.

6.3.2 Selection of -en by different classes of  V In most paradigms based on Wasow (1977), the distribution of adjectival passives is essentially identical to that of underived lexical adjectives. This pattern follows from the adjectival head -en being present throughout a derivation (6-23a). Hence, Verbs that select APs provide a good diagnostic for classifying passives as adjectival. In contrast, Wasow considers the lack of the category A in verbal passives to be a crucial indicator of their transformational genesis. That is, while adjectival passives instantiate for him a lexically stipulated category change of the stem (“morphological derivation” from V to A), verbal passives do not change categories, because transformations lack this capability. Thus for Wasow, verbal passives must be Vs.17 16 Since the notion “property” or “state” is simply the interpretation of A in LF, Bresnan (1982), in stating a lexical conversion from V to A, adds this interpretive feature to verbal participles. 17 Chomsky’s (1981: 50) way of distinguishing verbal from (undiscussed) adjectival passives is different. For him, verbal passives have a special “neutralized category” [+V, unspecified for N]; for critiques and discussion of Chomsky’s proposal, see Åfarli (1992) and Emonds (2000: ch. 5).

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 6 English passive structures and the passive participle

Empirically, both types of Germanic and Romance passive phrases are selected by verbs whose subcategorization frames include AP, but there is a difference. Adjectival passives are indeed selected by essentially all V that select AP complements (Wasow mentions English act, appear, be, become, look, remain, seem, smell, and sound), while very few, apparently only one or two “auxiliary” V in a given language, select verbal passives. The proposal (6-23a) certainly explains the first part of this statement. Nonetheless, it fails to clarify why analytic verbal passives are compatible with only a few “passive auxiliaries” otherwise specified as +___AP, for instance, English be and get, Spanish ser ‘be’, German werden ‘become, get’.18 For now, I put this issue aside. My proposed solution to this question in section 6.6 leads to a novel appreciation of how grammatical and open class items in the lexicon are fundamentally different.

6.3.3 Adjectival pre-modification in (only) adjectival passives Characteristic adjectival modifiers, so-called grading words, “degree words,” and certain prefixes such as un-, can modify adjectival passives as in (6-24a). Some not fully understood differences among adjectival passives apparently determine which ones permit a full range of these modifiers. In any case, verbal passives, the only type allowed with progressive aspect or certain adverbs as in (6-24b), do not tolerate these pre-modifiers of A. Additionally, combining adjectival modifiers with the verbs in (6-20) that don’t permit adjectival passives (approached/ avoided/ handed, etc.), as in (6-24c), predictably creates more ungrammatical combinations. (6-24) a.

The garden looked too overplanted. These seats remain non-reserved. Marseille sounded more affected by strikes than Bordeaux. That region doesn’t seem very inhabited. How used did that clay feel?

18 According to Emonds (2013c), previous studies have not understood that six transitive passive auxiliaries of English (get, have, want, need, see, hear) introduce verbal rather than adjectival passives. I call these verbal passives “indirect” because their surface subjects semantically relate to the main verb similarly to subjects of Japanese indirect passives. Section 6.5.1 will show that all the standard diagnostics for verbal passive hold in an indirect passive sentence like Mary got/ wanted/ had them sent free tickets.

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 217

b. *The garden is being too/ very overplanted. *These seats have been recently non-reserved to accommodate latecomers. *How offended was the driver being by the policeman? c. *Marseille was more avoided by tourists than Bordeaux. *That prison doesn’t seem very escaped these days. *How handed around did that clay feel? Though the theory of grammatical modification remains sketchy, the following seems to be a minimal requirement: Many, perhaps all, items that modify only a specific lexical category X0 (here A) require that this X0 be lexicalized throughout a derivation of LF. The structural contrast between (6-24a and b-c) is then the basis for correlating free adjectival modification with the presence of an interpreted lexical item under A. Since the -en suffix on a verbal passive is absent, that is, cancelled or uninterpreted in LF (6-23b), these passives don’t tolerate degree words or purely adjectival prefixes. An often noted example of this incompatibility is the adjectival prefix un(Siegel 1973). Passives prefixed with un- ‘not’ can appear in AP complements as in (6-25a), while verbal passives cannot. So prefixing un- to the verb stems in (6-20), which are incompatible with adjectival passives, creates impossible combinations (6-25b): (6-25) a.

That work seemed {unknown/ unpainted/ unrewarded}. Those books might remain {untouched/ unfinished/ unsold}. b. *That work {was/ seemed} {unleft in good hands/ unfollowed by others}. *Those gloves will {get/ remain} { unthrown/ unhanded} to any students.

Again, if a prefix modifies only members of lexical category X0, it appears that X0 must be lexicalized throughout a derivation.19 The paradigms in this section thus confirm the descriptive generalization (6-23a-b). This generalization is elegantly captured formally by specifying -en as an optional carrier of the LF Cancellation Feature of chapter 1. (6-26)

English passive participle (final version): -en, A(Ø), D, < V___>

19 Similarly, a range of quantifiers and determiners which modify only nouns cannot modify English gerundive DPs headed by V- [N ing], because this latter use of the N suffix is lexicalized only in PF and is absent in narrow syntax and LF.

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If Ø is not chosen, -en is interpreted as a property and is present in narrow syntax and LF, yielding an adjectival passive. If Ø is chosen, -en is inserted only at PF, and a verbal passive results because the suffix is uninterpreted. This very simple lexical device thus formally expresses the many and superficially complex differences between verbal and adjectival passives. This result constitutes this chapter’s second major simplification in the analysis of periphrastic passives, complementing the first made at the end of section 6.2, namely that subject-object co-indexing in passives does not result from movement.

6.3.4 Agent phrases in passives: Sructurally obligatory vs. optional Many studies (Chomsky 1965: ch. 2; Wasow 1977: section 4.3; Jaeggli 1986: section 6; Åfarli 1989: section 1.2.2.1; Schoorlemmer 1995: section III.1.1; Kratzer 2000) have contributed to establishing a claim that a verbal passive always includes a syntactically present logical subject, either in a by phrase or as a covert DP. Verbal passives (6-27) thus contrast with many adjectival passives (6-28), which usually lack such arguments. (6-27) a. b. c. d.

The meeting was started on time (by Susan) (in order) to please the host. The chairs were moved around on purpose (by the guests). This corn has been grown voluntarily (by peasants/ to stave off famine). Our workers are better paid intentionally (by the new boss).

(6-28) a. b. c. d.

That series of meetings sounds completed (*by the committee). Most of our furniture is still unmoved (*by the company). We judge the corn fully grown (*voluntarily/ *to stave off famine). Our workers remain better paid (*intentionally).

Evidence that verbal passives always have external arguments can be summarized as in (6.29). Adjectival passives lack these arguments, as seen in (6.28). (6-29) External arguments in verbal passives – A higher subject can sometimes control the optional PRO subject of an adjunct infinitive of purpose, optionally introduced by in order (6-27a, c). – A syntactically present animate subject is a necessary condition for adverbs of intention, as in (6-27b, c, d).

6.3 Verbal vs. adjectival passives: distinct yet closely related  

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Alongside (6-29), the idea that Adjectival Passives totally lack external arguments has also been widely accepted. However, Meltzer-Asscher (2011) and Breuning (2014) argue this two-way implication is false. The latter’s examples include: (6-30)

No longer does Tim Thomas appear trained by Tim Hortons. Steve Jobs’s birthday doesn’t go unnoticed by spammers. Streisand stars as a sexy housewife who always seems dressed by Frederick’s of Hollywood.

These data lead Breuning to conclude in his section 4.1: adjectival passives include an external argument, just like verbal passives . . . by-phrases, instrumentals and manner adverbials occur more frequently with verbal passives  .  .  . because adjectival passives are stative, while verbal passives are eventive.

This formulation is misleading, however, because Breuning fails to establish that external arguments in adjectival passives are obligatorily structurally present, as they are in verbal passives. There are several reasons for maintaining a difference between obligatory vs. optional external arguments: – It provides a reason for the frequency differences. – Native speakers feel that agents/ experiencers are always implied in verbal passives (6-27), but not always in adjectival passives (6-28). – Veselovská and Karlík (2004: 204) observe that unexpressed agents in verbal passives can easily be questioned (This meat’s been frozen. Who did it?), but less naturally in adjectival passives (This meat looks frozen. ??Who did it?) – An obligatory unexpressed agent in verbal passives can be the controller of purpose clause subjects (6-31a), while in adjectival passives, any agent phrase is either overt or not present at all (6-31b). (6-31) a.

That insurance will be purchased to protect myself in foreign countries. Our house will be sold to get ourselves money for a car. b. *That insurance sounds designed to protect himself. *Our fields remain uncultivated to get ourselves bigger subsidies.

The “external arguments” of adjectival passives are better analyzed as optional complement PPs of certain lexical adjectives, as in surprised by/ at the news; overwhelmed by/ with small duties; slowed down by/ from lack of sleep; upset by/ over the news. If so, adjectival passive APs are then like other APs: they cannot have overt internal subjects (cf. section 4.2.3). Consequently, these arguments of adjectival passives are not obligatory, but are rather purely optional, like adjuncts and most lexically selected complement PPs. For the same reason, their Ps can vary

220 

 6 English passive structures and the passive participle

according to the selecting predicate: surprised at/ by the news; overwhelmed with/ by small duties, slowed down from/ by lack of sleep, etc. I conclude that syntactic theory should express why verbal passives must, but adjectival passives need not have a structurally represented overt or covert DP subject. Now in general, we know that verbs require subjects – this is Chomsky’s (1981: ch. 3) Extended Projection Principle. (4-46) in chapter 4 seems to be a justified formulation: (4-46) Extended Projection Principle (“EPP”). A verb must have a structural subject phrase if it is a lexical head of a phrasal constituent in LF. This statement correctly exempts “empty auxiliaries” such as passive be and perfect have from the EPP; on their own, such verbs lack inherent content, that is, they are absent in LF, and concomitantly they seem not to require having their own subject. Also relevant is that verbs with derivational morphology or inside compounds, as in meeting place, dish washing, to spell check, a think tank, infestation, and bereavement lack syntactic subject phrases. The question now is, where is the structural (or “logical”) subject of the lexical head V in a verbal passive located? Presumably, at least hierarchically, in the position of their overt variants. When overt, the agent phrase appears as an “adjunct PP” in the VP, that is, outside the smallest VP but inside the largest one, as seen in (6-32): (6-32) The meeting was [VP [VP started on time] [PP by [DP Susan]]]. The chairs were [VP [VP moved around] on purpose [PP by [DP the guests]]]. The P in these phrases serves to assign case to its object, but is itself uninterpreted and hence absent in LF.20 This implies that at LF, the DP objects of this P, Susan and the guests in the examples above, c-command the lower VP and hence by definition (6-8) are the required DP subjects at LF of the head V in a verbal passive. (6-8)

Subjects across Categories: The subject of a lexical head X is the lowest projection of D which c-commands some phrasal projection of X within a minimal containing DP or IP.

20 A strong indication that this P plays no role in LF is that it is compatible with different Theta Roles (a letter was received/ written by Mary), and that the Ps marking passive agent phrases in other languages vary randomly, not according to their meaning: German von ‘of’, French de ‘of’ or par ‘by’, Japanese ni ‘to’, Czech Instrumental Case, etc.

6.4 Only verbal passives exhibit the full internal structure of VPs  

 221

One can reasonably ask, what then excludes active counterparts to the sentences in (6-32), such as *It [VP [VP started the meeting on time] [PP by Susan]] and *It seemed to [VP [VP move the chairs around] on purpose [PP by the guests]]. These variants are disallowed by Economy of Representation (2-38); by all three measures (fewest phrases, fewest words, and fewest morphemes), their well-formed counterparts in (6-32) are more economical. To see how the Extended Projection Principle (4-46) applies to passive structures, let us look again at the earlier characterization of the difference between adjectival and verbal passives. (6-23) Interpretation of the passive suffix: a. In adjectival passives, the PF suffix [A -en] is present on V throughout a derivation. b. In verbal passives, the PF suffix [A -en] is absent in interpretation (LF) and realized only at PF. By (6-23a), the verb stems in adjectival passives are exempted from the EPP, because the A –en, and not the V stem of a passive, is its lexical head at LF. In fact, adjectival passives are treated in many traditional grammars as an example not of verbs but of “derived adjectives”. That is, a V inside an adjectival passive is simply not the lexical head of a phrase and hence not subject to the EPP, which accounts for the acceptable agentless examples in (6-28). By (6-23b), the only category in the head of a verbal passive participle at LF is the V (the A head is canceled), and so, as the head of this phrase, it receives the standard interpretation of a V, namely it reports an Activity/ Event.

6.4 Only verbal passives exhibit the full internal structure of VPs As observed by Wasow (1977: 341), verbal passives essentially reproduce the full range of complement structures found in active VPs, except that passive VPs contain one gap e in place of the “passivized” DP: Mary was (being) elected e President; Jim should be kept e company this month; Sue was sent e the letter. They are in this way unlike adjectival passives, which are unacceptable in several such contexts: *Mary sounded elected President; *Jim seemed kept company this month; *Sue was unsent the letter. In general, adjectival passives exhibit a smaller range of complement patterns. In particular, they tolerate no overt bare complement DPs: *Bill sounded offered a dinner (Wasow 1977: 344). We can account for most of these restrictions

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 6 English passive structures and the passive participle

by invoking the Case Filter, since Adjectives don’t assign at least Accusative Case. This lack of case explains why adjectival passives “cannot affect applied arguments” (Breuning 2014, sect. 6.6).21

6.4.1 Passive structures and case assignment Very familiar facts of English cast doubt on whether a verbal passive participle interferes in any way with Case assignment. The examples (6-33) exhibit a range of underlined DP objects in situ where prima facie, passive as well as active Vs assign Case. (6-33) Verbal passives; the Case Filter has no effect: Ann was [given the letter]. That letter was [sent all the candidates]. Who got [taken such unfair advantage of]? A lot of vacation was (being) [allowed the workers]. The workers were (being) [allowed a lot of vacation]. Peter was (being) [denied his rights]. Peter’s rights were (being) [denied him]. She was (being) [charged a lot of money]. In some dialects, the direct objects of some double object verbs do not freely passivize but in others they do, and in all dialects the indirect objects can always passivize (Emonds and Ostler 2006 and other references there). Thus, all dialects allow at least one overt object post-verbal DP, so these DPs all receive abstract Case from the participial V. Put differently, since verbal passives have the full internal structure of VPs less one DP gap, all the VPs in (6-33) can be grammatical; the Case Filter is in no way involved in verbal passives, counter to almost all Government and Binding literature. In telling contrast to these well-formed verbal passives, the corresponding adjectival passives based on double object constructions in (6-34), as observed in Wasow (1977), are always ill-formed. Levin and Rappaport (1986: section 4) 21 Breuning considers spared and denied to be exceptional adjectival passives formed from applied objects: Victim remains denied her American nationality; The Victoria was unspared the horrors of World War II. However, these sound like journalese, which is often includes ungrammatical shortenings, that is, deliberate performance errors such as article deletions motivated by length limits.

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also note these effects for adjectival passives, but do not pursue the implications regarding Case of this contrast with verbal passives. (6-34) Adjectival Passives excluded by the Case Filter: *Ann seemed given the letter. *That letter sounded sent all the candidates. *Who acted taken such unfair advantage of? *A lot of vacation stayed allowed the workers. *Those workers appeared allowed a lot of vacation. *Peter looked denied his rights. *Peter’s rights remained denied him. *She felt (un)charged too much money. Had syntacticians taken more interest in adjectival passives, they could have concluded that the Case Filter accounts naturally for the above ungrammatical pattern, because no A, passive or not, can assign case either to a DP that moves or to one that is spelled out in its base position. The fact that the Case Filter successfully excludes the examples in (6-34) suggests that a syntactic analysis, counter to the Government and Binding consensus that adjectival passives must be lexical, can also explain the other syntactic restrictions on adjectival passives: that they are incompatible with derived (or “applied”) direct objects and unacceptable in many idiomatic objects (Emonds 2017b: sections 2.5 and 2.7). Recall that a case assigning head is the lexical head of the phrase. The formal definition of lexical head (4-35) is repeated here for convenience; notice that the lexical head Y need not be the same category as that of the phrase XP it heads. (4-35)

Definition of Lexical Head of a Phrase a. If a head of a phrase is a lexical category (N, V, A or P), then it is a lexical head of that phrase. b. The lexical head of a XP is the highest interpreted lexical head Y0 in XP. c. In a gerund or participle, the case-assigner mut be the lexical head.

Thus inside adjectival passives, the potential case-assigner is A (which can’t assign case). However, when this A is canceled (not interpreted) in verbal passives, V replaces the –en suffix as the lexical head and consequently case-assigner.22

22 In an active past participle, -en has the category TENSE, so here the V stem is the highest interpreted lexical head and assigns case.

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 6 English passive structures and the passive participle

Summarizing, like other adjectives, the participles in (6-34) with word-internal right hand A heads simply fail to assign case to any internal DPs, and so adjectival passive phrases can’t contain such DPs. In contrast, because the entry (6-26) can cancel the Adjective category in a derivation, V rather than A can be the lexical head of the passive phrase at LF. Nothing then stops a verbal passive’s head V from assigning case, including in some dialects to a “second DP” in a Double Object complement structure. This contrast in case-assigning capability is thus another property that follows from the earlier distinct characterization (6-23) of the two passive types (A and V). Therefore, the generally more restricted complementation of adjectival passives does not support a lexicalist conclusion that they are not fundamentally syntactic.

6.4.2 Verb–object idioms limited to verbal passives A final distributional contrast is that verbal but not adjectival passives tolerate surface subjects that are derived from active sentences with verb-object idioms, as in (6-35). However, parallel adjectival passives as in (6-36) are ill-formed. (6-35) Idiomatic verbal passives Too much advantage was/ got taken of our staff. (take advantage) Considerable time got saved by our working at home. (save time) More attention should be paid to safety concerns. (pay attention) (6-36) Excluded adjectival passives *Too much advantage remained/ looked taken of our staff. *Considerable time seemed/ felt saved on that project. *More attention stayed/ sounded paid to safety concerns. It appears that verb-object idioms survive in verbal passives because no interpreted adjectival head intervenes between the two parts of the idiom in LF. (On the generality of this adjacency condition on idioms, see O’Grady 1998). The object NP in an idiom thus resembles an object NP that is case-marked by a transitive verb; neither NP can be separated from the V by an intervening interpreted lexical head A. We have now examined six ways in which verbal and adjectival passives differ: (6-37) Verbal vs. Adjectival Passives i. An interpretive difference: ongoing vs. completed activity ii. Selection of -en by different classes of V

6.5 English indirect passives 

iii. iv. v. vi

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Adjectival pre-modification in only adjectival passives Agent phrases structurally obligatory only in verbal passives Exclusion of forms by the Case Filter only in adjectival passives Verb–object idioms limited to verbal passives

These properties are all consequences of the broad descriptive generalizations in (6-23), which state that in (only) verbal passives, the adjectival category of the participial head -en loses its role in LF if the Cancellation feature is chosen with it. This crucial choice is made possible formally by the lexical entry (6-26), which includes a parenthesized feature Ø to optionally cancel the content of A. Choosing this feature changes the interpreted lexical head in passives from A to V. Consequently, only if this option is chosen do the properties of verbal passives result.

6.5 English indirect passives In addition to counterparts of the familiar analytic verbal passives of English, several languages have a second type of passive often called “indirect”. For example, besides synthetic passives which are the near equivalent of English verbal passives, Japanese has a second type of synthetic passive in which accusative and/or dative DPs of an active verb retain those cases, while the surface subject expresses an additional Animate DP “affected” by the action, often but not always adversely. These Japanese (synthetic) verbal passives are called “indirect” or “gapless” passives and have been analyzed in many studies, among others in Kuroda (1992) and Kubo (1992).23 To see what kind of sentences are involved, we start with some straightforward English active clauses: (6-38) Her husband replastered the kitchen for Kamila last week. Professional thieves have stolen Kamila’s car on her. The neighbor is trimming the hedge for Kamila. These sentences of course have direct passive counterparts, which mutatis mutandis, have the same structure in English and Japanese.

23 Japanese indirect passives tend to be interpreted as adversative for their subject DP, but Kubo (1992) shows that this is not necessarily the case. She constructs some unmistakably “beneficial” Japanese indirect passives.

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 6 English passive structures and the passive participle

(6-39) The kitchen was/ got replastered for Kamila (by her husband) last week. Kamila’s car has been stolen on her (by professional thieves). The hedge is being/ getting trimmed for Kamila (by the neighbor). Now if English could form indirect passives exactly like Japanese, it would also allow the following “indirect” variants of (6-39), in which no verbal object of an active clause surfaces in subject position: (6-40) *Kamila was replastered the kitchen (by her husband) last week. *Kamila has been stolen her car (by professional thieves). *Kamila is being trimmed the hedge (by the neighbor). The ungrammatical examples in (6-40) mimic acceptable Japanese constructions, using English word order and periphrasis.24 But though the examples (6-40) are ungrammatical, English does have a closely related passive construction that expresses the same meaning as Japanese indirect passives. We need only change the auxiliary be to have or get and place the underlined object DP in front of the participle. (6-41) Kamila had/ got the kitchen replastered (by her husband) last week. Kamila has had her car stolen (by professional thieves). Kamila is having/ getting the hedge trimmed (by the neighbor). Previous studies of English verbal (direct) passives have not recognized this pattern (6-41) as a distinct and systematic subtype, where the auxiliary is not an intransitive be or get but a transitive grammatical verb, in particular have or get. This latter type, which I call “English indirect passives”, will be shown here to be fully verbal and not adjectival. Moreover, indirect passives (6-41) do not consist of embedded passive clauses containing traditionally analyzed direct passives, such as reduced relatives or other types of “small clauses”. Instead, English indirect passives, rather than containing direct passives, are structurally parallel to them. The only difference is

24 In the Japanese sentences transliterated by the examples in (6-40), the agent of the active clauses can be expressed in an optional agent PP exactly as in simple direct passives, and is fully analogous to the optional by-phrases in English passives. Indirect passives in several languages have been studied under the broad cover term “noncanonical passives”; see the comprehensive volume of Alexiadou and Schäfer 2013). Some of this research includes a subcase of English indirect passives whose auxiliary is transitive get.

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that their auxiliaries, which like be and get select AP complements, are transitive rather than intransitive.25 A natural question is whether this construction tolerates other transitive verbs besides have and get. Perhaps surprisingly, there appear to be precisely four other such English verbs: want, need, see and hear. (6-42)

Kamila wanted/ needed/ saw/ heard the kitchen replastered (by her husband). Kamila wanted/ needed/ saw/ heard her car stolen (by professional thieves). Kamila wants/ needs/ is seeing/ is hearing the hedge trimmed (by the neighbor).

Just like have and get, (i) all these verbs have very general meanings and (ii) all play other particular roles in the English grammatical system not available to open class verbs, as will be discussed in the next section. Since these indirect passives share several syntactic properties of the familiar direct passives, I call all the constructions in (6-41)-(6-42) “English indirect passives”.26 What both have in common, with or without auxiliaries present, is a verbal passive participle, the form that is a sine qua non of English passive clauses, as in (6-3a). On the other hand, the auxiliaries be, have and get, as well as the others, differ from the participle in that they appear in a plethora of constructions with no specific link to anything identifiable as passive. English direct and indirect passives can thus be simply subsumed under a single label “passive,” provided it is understood that English contains seven, not two, passive “auxiliaries”: be, get, have, want, need, see and hear. The term “auxiliary” here has a quite standard, if informal, cross-linguistic usage: (6-43) Auxiliary. A potential auxiliary verb is a verb with very general meaning, often with construction-specific properties, which combines with another lexical verb in the same clause.27 25 The limitation on auxiliaries in both direct and indirect passives to grammatical rather than open class verbs provides some crucial evidence in section 6.6 for postulating two distinct storage components, the grammatical Lexicon and the open class Dictionary. 26 To my knowledge, other research has not specifically studied anywhere near the full range of English indirect verbal passives, with its six auxiliaries. 27 For examples, the Czech verb bych ‘would’ is a “conditional auxiliary”, French faire ‘make’ is a “causative auxiliary”, German werden ‘become’ is the future auxiliary, the Japanese adjectival verb (a)na- ‘not’ is a negative auxiliary, and Spanish haber is a “perfect auxiliary”. None of these share a common syntax, and none of these uses are related in any special or or consistent way to passives.

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Traditional, descriptive and pedagogical English grammars are at a loss trying to be precise about what behaviors the term “auxiliary” should cover. They tend to stumble back and forth between “auxiliary” defined more generally as in (6-43) and “auxiliary” as a term for English items with NICE properties (section 1.3.4), that is, forms that invert in questions and precede -n’t, thus illogically including the main verb be and excluding the passive auxiliary get. We return to clarifying this issue in section 6.6.

6.5.1 Indirect passives are verbal passives A reader might hope that indirect passives are a subcase of something familiar from previous grammatical research, and not a heretofore unrecognized English construction. So could indirect passives in (6-41)-(6-42) be perhaps instances of the adjectival passives analyzed in section 6.3? By discussing the differences (6-37) between verbal and adjectival passives, this section will show that the answer is firmly negative. English indirect passives are decisively verbal, with the verbs that introduce them being simply transitive counterparts of the long recognized passive auxiliaries be and get. The empirical distinctions between adjectival and verbal passives in section 6.3 fall under a series of headings, which I now discuss in turn. (i) Pre-modifiers of adjectives (too, very, so, negative un-, etc.) are available in varying degrees in adjectival passives (6-44a) but not at all in indirect passives (6-44b), just as in other verbal passives. (The grammatical verbs that select indirect passives are underlined.) (6-44)

a.

Kamila will find/ discover her son’s infection untreated by the new doctor. They considered/ judged their house rather cut off/ too damaged to move into. b. Kamila will get/ want her son’s infection (*un)treated by the new doctor. They saw/ had their house (*too) damaged/ (*very) cut off from the bus lines.

(ii) Agent by-phrases are regularly allowed with verbal passives, but are limited in adjectival passives to optional PP complements selected only by some individual heads (section 6.3.4). While various open class transitive verbs such as declare, find and call can take adjectival passives as object complements, like many other adjectival passives these reject agent phrases.

6.5 English indirect passives 

(6-45)

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Kamila found her garden overwatered (*by Jan). The tax office declared the bonus unearned (*by the new coach). You will find this dish less/ too salted (*by the substitute cook). Many customers called our product well made (*by the local supplier).

This paradigm contrasts with the freely occurring post-verbal agent phrases in indirect verbal passives, as in the earlier (6-41) and (6-42). (iii) Subjects based on indirect objects appear in verbal passives (6-46a), but not in adjectival passives (6-46b), as first brought out in Wasow (1977). (6-46) a. b.

Some new customers were/ got handed free tickets. Harry was/ got sent a new radio last week. *Some new customers felt/ looked handed free tickets. *Harry sounded/ became sent a new radio.

The same distinction is found in indirect passives. Overt direct object DPs, underlined in (6-47), can remain inside indirect verbal passive phrases, together with passivized indirect objects represented here with traces ti: (6-47)

The manager had/ got new customers handed ti free tickets. The players saw/ heard the coachi offered ti a big bonus. They may need/ want their childreni prepared ti more healthy snacks.

In contrast, adjectival passives modify DPs that correspond only to active clause direct objects (Levin and Rappaport 1986). (6-48)

*The manager declared/ judged new customers handed too many free tickets. *The players imagined/ considered the coach offered a big bonus. *They may notice/ picture their children prepared more healthy snacks.

So again, indirect passives in (6-47) pattern with verbal rather than adjectival passives. (iv) Passivized verb-object idioms survive when in verbal passives (6-49), whether direct (a) or indirect (b). However, corresponding adjectival passives as in (6-50) are ill-formed. (6-49)

a. Too much advantage was/ got taken of our staff. b. The new guests wanted/ needed more attention paid to safety concerns.

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 6 English passive structures and the passive participle

*Too much advantage remained/ looked taken of our staff. *The new guests believed / imagined more attention paid to safety concerns.

On the basis of these four well established diagnostics that distinguish the two English passives, we can confidently conclude that its indirect passives are not adjectival passives. They are rather verbal in precisely the same sense as are traditional direct passives with the intransitive auxiliaries be and get.

6.5.2 Indirect passives are not “embedded direct passives” A reader may be skeptical of the claim that English passives, so intensively studied for centuries, include a subtype that traditional studies have barely noticed and not named. However, similar oversights of traditional grammar include the division between gerundive and derived nominals, both formed from V-ing, first clearly distinguished in the classic study of Chomsky (1970); Fillmore’s (1965) innovative clarification of the grammar of English indirect objects; and the work here in chapter 5 accounting for the sharply different distributions of English gerunds and infinitives. Such a skeptic might propose that the six indirect passive auxiliaries are simply main verbs with non-finite clausal complements whose verb phrases are the familiar direct passives, with the peculiarity that they lack an overt auxiliary. In this regard, I lay out and then refute two logical possibilities. Logically, the sought-for non-finite clausal complement is either a DP or it is not. The first alternative is as represented in (6-51): (6-51) Kamila had/ got [DP [DP the kitchen] [VP repainted (by her husband) last week]]. Kamila has had/ gotten [DP [DP her car] [VP stolen (by professional thieves)]]. In the structure (6-52), the assumption is the contrary, that an indirect passive is not a DP, but some other kind of constituent, for this discussion labeled a “small clause” (SC). (6-52) Kamila had/ got [SC [DP the kitchen] [VP repainted (by her husband) last week]]. Kamila has had/ gotten [SC [DP her car] [VP stolen (by professional thieves)]].

6.5 English indirect passives 

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The informal term “small clause,” coined for this type of verb-less predication (Stowell 1981), has never fallen into place in any formal theory of well-motivated categories. Nonetheless, recent decades have produced many advocates of structures such as those in (6-52). Several of the proposed justifications for SCs are examined and refuted in Emonds (2007: ch. 1), as reviewed here briefly in section 4.5.4. Their only real enduring motivation is a persistent but empirically unsupported intuition that subjects and predicates must always form a “propositional unit” that dominates no other material. (The present work makes no use of any such small clauses which lack main verbs.)

6.5.3 Indirect passives are not DP-internal reduced relatives I first discuss the putative embedded DP structures as in (6-51). In fact, English has such structures in other contexts, which are often called “reduced relatives”: (6-53) [DP [DP The kitchen] [VP installed by our company]] still isn’t paid for. Don’t buy [DP [DP any car] [VP stolen by professional thieves]]. Jim gave [DP [DP the village] [VP visited by an inspector]] an excellent rating. There is a well-known property of such reduced relatives inside DPs: they can modify neither personal pronouns nor proper nouns (such as names of towns): (6-54)

*She wants another kitchen, but [DP [DP it] [VP installed last year]] isn’t paid for. *Used cars are cheap, but don’t buy [DP[DP them] [VP stolen by professionals]. *The group gave [DP [DP Litovel] [VP visited by an inspector]] a top rating.

However, indirect passives that follow pronouns and proper nouns are fully acceptable, showing that their passive participles are not embedded inside DPs like reduced relative clauses: (6-55) They needed a new kitchen, so Kamila had/ got it installed by our company. They had two cars, and Kamila actually saw/ heard them stolen by professionals. Our group wants/ needs Litovel visited by a different inspector. Furthermore, precisely because the passive participles in (6-55) are not internal to the DPs of the proper nouns or pronouns they modify, these combinations cannot serve as DP subjects of a predicate (6-56), nor move as constituents (6-57):

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 6 English passive structures and the passive participle

(6-56) *It installed by our company last week looks beautiful. *Litovel visited by an inspector became the proudest village in the region. (6-57) *It was [them/ they stolen by professionals] that brought in the biggest profits. * [Jan treated by the new doctor] was afterwards taken to the hospital. There is thus a range of constructions that show that indirect passives with verbs like get and have in (6-51) are not simply direct passives embedded inside DP objects.

6.5.4 Indirect passives are not direct passives inside small clauses The remaining logical possibility for assigning embedded clause status to these DP-VP sequences is structures as in (6-52), where the embedded clauses/SC are not DPs. The most basic and general test for detecting phrasal constituents is the possibility of transformational movement (Ross 1967). Among movements, the  syntactic site for movement with the fewest categorial restrictions (that is,  the most permissive test) seems to be the focus position in what are called pseudo-cleft constructions. This position accepts any widely recognized category of phrase: (6-58)

What Jim didn’t want was [DP any pity/ Rover barking at the neighbors]. What I promised her was [IP that I would take care of myself]. What we arranged was [PP for her to take care of herself]. What the girl felt was [AP ashamed of herself]. Where you should go is [PP into the garden]. What she should do now is [VP trim the hedge].

Strings bracketed as SC in (6-52) fail even this very permissive diagnostic for movement (6-59); the fact is that these putative “small clauses” never move (Haegeman 1991: 545), thus violating Ross’s diagnostic. (6-59) *What Kamila wanted/ needed was the kitchen repainted last week. *What Kamila had/ got was her car stolen by professionals. *What Kamila is seeing/ hearing is her hedge trimmed by the neighbor. The obvious conclusion is that these putative constituents don’t move because clausal nodes that unite them don’t exist; see also Pollard and Sag (1994). No

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 233

SC categories correspond to the brackets in (6-52). Consequently, the participles in indirect passives are not to be analyzed as direct passives embedded either in DPs or in small clauses; rather, they are simply phrasal sisters to the passive auxiliaries, and in this way entirely analogous to participial phrases in direct passives. Another argument, independent of movement, confirms that indirect passives are not small clauses. It is based on the distribution of English progressive aspect. It is well known that stative main verbs (for example, contain, have, lack, like, love, need, owe, own, possess, etc.) generally don’t appear in the progressive: (6-60) Kamila was getting/ *having an infection/ a new hedge. Kamila is selling/ using/ *owning/ *possessing another car. Our garden is providing/ creating/ *possessing/ *needing more shade. So, main verbs are subject to (6-61). (6-61) Stative Verb Restriction. Clauses with stative main verbs cannot be progressive. As (6-62) illustrates, (6-61) holds in verbal passives as well as actives: (6-62)

Shade is being/ getting provided/ created/ *possessed/ *needed by our garden. Another car is being/ getting sold/ used/ *owned/ *needed by Kamila.

If the participles in indirect passives were (counter to my analysis) embedded small clauses as in (6-52), have in (6-63) below would be a stative main verb and so should be unacceptable, like the other stative main verbs in (6-62). But if have in indirect passives is simply the transitive counterpart to the passive auxiliary be, the progressive in the indirect passive should be fully acceptable. And in fact, it is: (6-63)

Kamila was having her grandson’s infection treated by her doctor. Kamila is having a new hedge planted by Jan.

So again, a prediction of the small clause analysis, this time based on the diagnostic (6-61), is not borne out. There is thus no escaping the conclusion that English indirect passive clauses are mono-clausal verbal passives in the same sense as are its direct passives,

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 6 English passive structures and the passive participle

exactly what this section set out to prove. Both direct and indirect verbal passives are sisters to the seven intransitive or transitive passive auxiliaries: be, get, have, want, need see and hear. Like other structural APs, verbal passive phrases do not have internal subjects.

6.5.5 Deriving verbal passives from AP structures The only potentially interpreted feature in the lexical entry (6-26) of -en is its lexical category A.28 In general, the interpretation of A is that of “a property”, which is precisely what is lacking in verbal passives; the latter describe actions and events, but not properties. The mechanism in verbal passives that makes the property interpretation of passive -en “unavailable” is thus the LF Cancellation Feature of chapter 1 in the entry (6-26).29 Besides accounting for the paradigms specific to verbal passives, this feature also sheds light on the question of why so few verbs select them. If the optional Cancellation Feature Ø is chosen with A, the participial –en no longer functions as the head of the passive phrase. That is, there is a crucial distinction that turns on the definition of the term “lexical head”, given earlier as (4-35) and repeated here.30 (6-64) Definition of Lexical Head of a Phrase a. If a head of a phrase is a lexical category (N, V, A or P), then it is a lexical head. b. The lexical head of XP is the highest interpreted lexical head Y0 in XP.31 c. In a gerund or participle, the case-assigner is the lexical head.

28 In the definition of AR (6-12), alternatively realized features, such as the feature D on passive participles, are not interpreted in “dissociated” PF positions, nor are context features like . Similarly, gender/ number features are interpreted only in their canonical position on D but not on items that agree with D (Chomsky 1965: ch. 4). 29 Supplementing the categorial feature A in a lexical entry by optional cancellation (Ø) is considerably simpler than previous accounts of the passive that require some separate transformational or lexical rule. 30 Recall also from chapter 1 that extended projections such as IP and DP have both functional category and lexical category heads. I and V are both heads of a single IP. 31 I endorse Kayne’s (1989) idea that the auxiliaries have and be do not contribute differently to LF, that is, they are contextual allomorphs of a semantically empty V. Cf. Emonds (2000: ch. 5) for discussion. Hence the auxiliaries have and do, as well as the verb be generally, do not qualify as lexical heads.

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Semantically empty categories like PØ (of, with) and VØ (the auxiliaries be, have) cannot be selected in isolation, but only in combination with interpreted categories. The same holds for the AØ head of verbal passives, which is selected in combination with V. That is, the lexical head of a verbal passive AP is not its “canceled” A head, but rather its interpreted sister, the lexical stem V of the verb. In verbal passives, the lexical entry (6-26) of [A -en] deprives the syntactic suffix of its static “Property” interpretation and simultaneously removes the categorial content of Adjectives necessary for various distributional properties such as adjectival pre-modification (section 6.3.3). The lexical head in verbal passives becomes V and is therefore subject to the EPP, repeated here: (4-46) Extended Projection Principle (“EPP”). A verb must have a structural subject phrase if it is a lexical head of a phrasal constituent in LF. This structural result then sets the stage for predicting further differences between verbal and adjectival passives, as seen in the next section.

6.6 Motivating the Syntacticon component The subtype of verbal passive newly identified in the preceding section is compatible with exactly six transitive auxiliaries (underlined in the following examples): (6-65)

Indirect passive auxiliaries Mary had/ got/ saw/ heard/ wanted/ needed her daughter re-examined. The owner had/ got/ saw/ heard/ wanted/ needed his son appointed mayor.

At the “pronounced” level in a derivation of a sentence (Phonological Form or PF), verbal and adjectival passives have identical morphosyntax in English, French and German (though there are some differences in Czech and Russian; cf. Schoorlemmer 1995 and Veselovská and Karlík 2004). In all these languages, the basic difference between the two types is at the “interpreted” level of a derivation, Logical Form or LF. I have proposed to express this difference by associating the passive suffix [A –en] in Verbal Passives with the Cancellation Feature Ø (introduced in section 1.2), which nullifies its interpretation as an A. This cancellation effect in turn implies that the lexical head (4-35) of a Verbal Passive becomes a V once –en is inserted. At the end of section 6.3.2, I left aside the question of why Verbal Passives are selected by considerably fewer verbs than Adjectival Passives. In Verbal Passives

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-en must be selected, but still, the LF head of the selected phrase must be V. The distributional generalization for the selection of passives thus includes two subcases: (6-66)

Selection of Passive Phrases a. Adjectival Passives are a subcase of satisfying the general frame +___A. b. Verbal Passives are selected by adding the AØ -en to a frame based on the lexical category V, namely by satisfying the frame +___V^AØ.

So now the question regarding the distribution of Verbal Passives becomes, why do only seven verbs (the six verbs in (6-65) plus be), and in particular no open class verbs, have a lexical entry V, +__ V^AØ? There are actually two separate theoretical queries lurking inside this single question. (6-67)

a.

b.

If we distinguish in a contentful way between open class and grammatical verbs, are the seven English passive auxiliaries closed class items? (Answer: yes) Why are open class verbs never lexically specified for the frame +___ V^AØ?

I hope that with good answers to these questions, this chapter’s analysis can be taken as solving the main questions about English analytic passives.

6.6.1 The hallmark of closed class items: Unique syntactic behavior From chapter 1 onward, this study has repeatedly referred to the distinction between closed and open classes of lexical items. Traditional, structuralist and some generative studies often treat this distinction as gradual or “continuous,” but this is a lingering vestige of pre-formal approaches to grammar. While such studies are comfortable with one or two passive auxiliaries, in the face of my empirically based claim that there are seven, formal studies need to ask: (6-68) Query about passive auxiliaries. How can the set of seven Verbal Passive auxiliaries be formally characterized? To answer this, I begin by sharpening the difference between open and closed lexical classes. A prerequisite for this involves distinguishing between syntactic and purely semantic features. This separation of these two types of features is proposed in Chomsky (1965: 88, 143, 150-151), although the distinction has rarely

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figured prominently in theoretical analyses. Purely semantic features, which differentiate pairs like destroy vs. damage, chair vs. stool, appreciate vs. enjoy, and long vs. tall vs. high, play no role in grammar. On the other hand, the syntactic features of grammar (e.g. ±PAST, ±ANIMATE, ±DEFINITE, etc.) are even more central in semantics than the purely semantic features. Closed class verbs are then those which lack purely semantic features; all their features play a role in syntax (as well as being central in semantics).32 This defining characteristic leads to a clear-cut syntactic test for distinguishing closed class or “grammatical” verbs from open class or “lexical” verbs. Any two grammatical verbs, for example transitive do and have, or intransitive be and go, necessarily differ by a feature that plays a role in syntax, that is, they behave differently with respect to some rule or principle of grammar. It then follows naturally that any two items in closed classes such as I or DET are specified by different syntactic features, at least one, and so have different distributions. (6-69) Unique Syntactic Behavior (“USB”). Any two closed class items in a language must have different grammatical distributions.33 Moreover, I claim that the open lexical classes (N, V, A and P) have recognizable closed subsets, whose members I call “grammatical V,” “grammatical N,” etc. Members of these subsets lack purely semantic features; their meanings are expressed only by their unique combinations of syntactic features and, because they lack purely semantic features, their meanings remain more general. I furthermore take the collection of all closed class items, whatever their category (I, Q, DET, NEG, PAST, grammatical N, V, and A, etc.) to be a separate component of a language’s lexicon (Emonds 2000: ch. 4): (6-70) The Syntacticon Component. The Syntacticon is the set of lexical items that lack purely semantic features. That is, all their features are used in syntax.34

32 This again goes back to a central point of Chomsky (1957: ch. 7): the most fruitful way to better understand semantics is to focus on explicit and complete syntactic description; more accurate semantic analysis in the same area then generally emerges as a by-product. 33 Syntactic theory, that is USB, thus correctly predicts that any two English modals have different behavior/ distribution. This is analogous to any two elements in the periodic table having distinct chemical behavior. Oddly, this latter fact is taken as a commonplace, while linguists often confusedly interpret USB as indicating grammatical “irregularity”. 34 As stressed in Emonds (2000: chs. 3-4), other syntactic properties distinguish the Syntacticon from the open class Dictionary. Only Syntacticon items can have null or (in English) non-alliter-

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The closed class of grammatical verbs is thus precisely those in the Syntacticon, and I claim that the seven passive auxiliaries are a subset of these. Since items that lack purely semantic features but are nonetheless distinct must differ by at least one syntactic feature, no two grammatical verbs can have the same syntactic properties. In other words, USB (6-69) is the revealing empirical hallmark of Syntacticon membership. As confirmation of my claim that all verbal passive auxiliaries are grammatical rather than open class lexical verbs, observe that these auxiliaries (be, get, have, want, need, see, hear) indeed all have the individual unique behavior expected from Syntacticon items. First, what sets them off from other grammatical verbs is that they take Verbal Passive complements. Then, they differ among themselves in the following ways: (6-71)

Unique Syntactic Behaviors of Verbal Passive Auxiliaries i. The syntax of get is unique in the collocations have got and get+V+ing (get working), and only this auxiliary is both intransitive (6-39) and transitive (6-41). ii. Have uniquely forms the English perfect active tenses with -en; in certain uses it inverts in questions and contracts to a final consonant (ʼve, ʼs,ʼd), and is one of a handful of Syntacticon verbs with an irregular third singular form. iii. The morpheme need doubles as a regular verb and shares being a negative polarity modal in English only with dare (which unlike need is not a passive auxiliary). Different behavior is also seen in She won’t dare/*need see a doctor. iv. The contraction of want (“wanna”), treated in several articles in generative frameworks, testifies to its syntactic uniqueness (*needa, *hava, *getta,). v. See and hear also have unique and distinct syntax. These two verbs, unlike the verbs want, need and get, freely take bare infinitives. They differ from each other in that see, even though Stative, has more extensive use in imperatives:

ating allomorphs (e.g. good/ best; go/ went, here/ now; few/ little), and only they can be alternatively realized. Open class N, V, A and P appear only in their canonical syntactic positions.

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(6-72) See/ *Hear how well she sings! See/ *Hear if they can do that for us. Please see/ *hear his new show this weekend. See /*Hear what your kid wrote to the teacher! By systematically applying the USB test (6-69) to compare them with other verbs, we find that these closed class verbs satisfy the broad definition of “Auxiliary” in (6-43): – They are among the least semantically specified items in the category V, and – They have special roles in grammar not shared with lexical verbs. The seven passive auxiliaries thus lead to a positive answer to the query (6-67a): (6-73) Verbal passive auxiliaries. These must be drawn from the closed subset of grammatical verbs. That is, they are Syntacticon members. There are other grammatical verbs with USB which are nonetheless not auxiliaries in either direct or indirect passives, for instance, do, let, go, come, say. Interestingly, we can predict which Syntacticon verbs can serve as passive auxiliaries. If a grammatical verb generally selects a complement AP, then it is a candidate for being a passive auxiliary as well. All the “passive auxiliaries” (be, get, have, want, need, see, hear) independently have either an intransitive subcategorization +___A or a transitive one +___D^A. Such selected AP complements are underlined in (6-74). (6-74) Her story was/ got too long. Something at work had/ got John hysterical. For traveling, we want/ need the family healthier than it is now. I’m glad to see/ hear Mary so happy. The requirement that passive participles occur only in positions where a verb can select an AP explains why the grammatical verbs do, let, go, come and say are not passive auxiliaries; this is because they don’t take APs: (6-75) *Bill’s strange behavior did his children sad. *You should do the laundry cleaner. *The neighbor has let the grass too long. *The suspect went/ came angry in the police car. *Mary said what she wanted foolish.

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The full answer to question (6-67a) is thus as follows: (6-76)

Predicting passive auxiliaries. Only grammatical V with a frame +___A form direct passives, and only those with +___D^(A) form indirect passives.35

Prima facie, the restriction (6-76) is not surprising, since in languages with agreeing adjectives (Czech, French, Russian, Spanish, etc.), passive participles always exhibit adjectival agreement morphology (Schoorlemmer1995; Veselovská and Karlík 2004).

6.6.2 Morphemes uninterpreted at the LF or PF interfaces I now turn to the query (6-67b): Why are open class verbs never lexically specified for the verbal passive frame +___V^AØ? The answer leads to a refinement in understanding of the nature of the Syntacticon (= Grammatical Lexicon). As background, the many properties that distinguish closed class Syntacticon items from open class Dictionary items can be organized as in the following table (Emonds 2005). (6-77)

Definition: Items with purely semantic features f a. Syntactic properties: i. Grammatical categories in the inventory ii. “Late insertion” possible during syntax and in PF iii. Items can spell out “alternatively realized” features iv. Suppletion inside entries (go/went; bad/ worse) b. Phonological properties: i. Items conform phonologically to “primary vocabulary” ii. Bound items that head compounds have inherent stress iii. Phonetically zero morphemes possible

Dict. YES

Synt. NO

N, V, A, P ALL NO possible NO

possible

NO

possible

possible

YES

YES

NO

NO

YES

35 This is a necessary but not quite a sufficient condition. The verb make has a frame +___D^(A) that yields, for example, make the load lighter. Since make selects a bare infinitive in the active (make him go home) but a to-infinitive in the passive (be made to go home), it has the USB of a grammatical verb. Yet it cannot be an indirect passive auxiliary: *make him taken to the hospital.

6.6 Motivating the Syntacticon component 

c.

Processing and production properties: i. Open classes; adults can coin neologisms YES ii. Interface with non-linguistic memory and YES culture iii. Processing look-up in terms of initial YES consonants

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NO NO NO

The focus here is on Property b(iii) in the Table, which concerns null lexical morphemes. Only Syntacticon items, including grammatical verbs, can have allomorphs that are “uninterpreted at PF” (that is, zero allomorphs). Thus, according to chapter 1 here, the English verb be has a null allomorph when it is finite.36 As another example, in an extensive cross-linguistic study, van Riemsdijk (2002) establishes that unmarked motion verbs in most West Germanic languages (but not Modern English) have a null allomorph, and furthermore that this allomorph is selected by only Modal Verbs. These are prime examples of grammatical (Syntacticon) verbs in these languages; see again note 18 in chapter 1. (6-78) Restriction on Null Morphemes. Only Syntacticon (closed class) items can be or select items that are null, that is, uninterpreted at the PF interface. This generalization of (6-77b-iii) immediately suggests an even wider one: (6-79) Restriction on Uninterpreted Morphemes. Only Syntacticon items can be or select items that are uninterpreted at either interface, PF or LF. Items uninterpreted at LF include those whose only inherent syntactic feature is the Cancellation Feature Ø, accompanied perhaps by other uninterpreted features such as alternatively realized and context features. Instances of such semantically empty morphemes are easy to find; the –ing suffix on gerunds and participles (ch. 4) spells out the single features NØ or AØ, and the English Present Tense agreement morpheme in (1-38) in chapter 1 spells out only uninterpreted IØ and alternatively realized D features (as –s or Ø). As an example of selection of semantically null morphemes by Syntacticon items, it is well known that some grammatical verbs, like seem with a finite complement and French falloir ‘be necessary’ require, i.e. select expletive subjects. Similarly, somewhat informal usage sanctions collocations such as make

36 English has a null I in John insisted that we Ø not be late. It also has null D, null grammatical P (Come this way; Hold it another way), a null allomorph of the Complementizer that, etc.

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it ‘succeed’, do it ‘have sex’, get it ‘understand/ catch on’, go for it, have at it, let it be, can(‘t) take it, etc. where no clear interpretation can be associated with it. So independently of English passive auxiliaries, the generalization formulated as Restriction (6-79) is amply justified, and in fact should replace statement biii in Table (6-77). The restriction (6-79) directly predicts that the lexical selection of a direct or indirect passive phrase by the frame V, +___ V^AØ is necessarily limited to Syntacticon verbs, because AØ is uninterpreted at LF. This answers query (6-67b) and explains why open class verbs can never be lexically specified for a verbal passive complement. The lexical framework here has thus been able to both formulate a previously unrecognized restriction on the form of verbal passives, and to elegantly and fully account for it.

6.7 Explaining the scope and properties of verbal passives In general, English Adjectival Passives are built around APs whose lexical head is the Adjective-forming suffix –en, which (crucially) alternatively realizes the head D of the direct object DP and at the same time is the cause of “dethematizing” or “lowering” active subjects. Due to this structure, these passive clauses exhibit the distribution and several phrase-internal properties of APs. English Verbal Passives are based on the same types of head, except that the A –en in this case also carries the Cancellation Feature, which shifts the construction’s lexical head to the V stem. As a result, the phrase-internal properties of Verbal Passives more resemble those of VPs, even though the passive phrases remain APs, in particular with respect to their distribution. A previously under-studied type of English Verbal Passives is what I am calling the English indirect passive, exemplified in (6-41)-(6-42). These “indirect passives” taken together with traditionally described passives (introduced with the grammatical verbs be and get) have brought to the fore a hitherto unformulated question. As long as the only verbal passives studied were formed with one or two auxiliaries, traditional grammar considered this limitation as natural as saying English has only one or two future auxiliaries (will and shall). But in the case of modals, generative analyses have undercut this facile answer. They imply that any notion of a special “future auxiliary” obscures the proper description of more general patterns. A syntactically interesting bigger class of English auxiliaries, the modals, contains a dozen members, not two, and the “future modals” have no special status. Only a more sophisticated syntactic theory, in which item-particular semantics becomes secondary, properly expresses

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the behavior of modals (their NICE properties). This theory, as seen in chapter 1, succeeds in reducing morphemes that express the future to a minor special case. Similarly, the demonstrated existence of seven rather than two passive auxiliaries calls for a more inclusive and non-traditional conception of passive structures, again less dependent on semantics. In particular, such a theory can explain why only a relatively small number of English grammatical verbs (seven to be exact) can take verbal passive VP complements. Thus, passive auxiliaries are neither unique nor on the other hand numerous. Their small fixed number, like that of modals, is typical of morpheme classes in the Syntacticon and can be contrasted with the hundreds of open class verbs that take active participial VP (V-ing) complements. For the first time, the special properties of this group of grammatical verbs have been brought together and theoretically situated.

7 The empirical basis of theoretical advance Each chapter of this book has started with some well-known morphosyntactic paradigms/ patterns of English verbs, and has ended up arguing for a novel and general structural hypothesis about the verb forms in question. These hypotheses often undercut or even contradict widespread beliefs about how the familiar forms should be analyzed. This concluding chapter reviews in turn these hypotheses and the erroneous beliefs that surround the forms themselves. At the same time, I want to focus on the factor that I think has prevented ideas at least similar to those put forward here from being discovered earlier. In every case, the problem seems to involve a failure to pursue and extend research proposals in ways that are suggested by the empirical justifications for them, or in other words, a failure to recognize or have confidence in newly discovered “patterns that matter”.

7.1 The chapters on finite forms: Formalizing salient empirical differences As an initial example, consider the material of chapter 1. Chomsky (1957) and his other early work isolated many syntactic patterns (in question formation, negation, tag questions, and other phenomena) that justified treating both English modals and clause-initial finite copulas as not being in the category Verb. The grammatical behavior of these items was associated in various generative works with a different category, in turn called AUX, INFL, I and T(ense) (this volume uses I); the lexical words most transparently associated with I were labeled modals M. In this case, the patterns that mattered were eventually informally named the NICE properties. But generative analyses of AUX (for example, Emonds 1976: ch. VI), which became generally accepted when renamed INFL, stopped short of re-categorizing all the morphemes with the NICE properties. Rather than using the category I(NFL) to capture all the relevant empirical patterns, the traditional grammar claim that these finite copulas (are, was, etc.) are verbs remained unchallenged, and an ad hoc rule “raising” the verb be to I (which changed the verb’s form in five different ways!) was widely adopted.1 Chapter 1 here has assigned the category I to morphemes according to the empirical pattern of the NICE properties; it uses I not only for modals but also for 1 For several analysts, even the NICE properties came to be treated as diverse, random “irregularities” of verbs; the clear and predictive difference between two distinct categories in the earlier generative framework was blurred and quickly faded from view. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110734379-008

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the finite copulas, which have the same behavior. What then emerges is a series of revealing regularities of true English verbs: (7-1) a. Finite copulas in I are followed by a zero allomorph of an otherwise minimally irregular V be/ being/ been. b. Without exception, all English verbs have five forms: bare, agreeing, present participle, past finite, and past participle.2 For open class verbs, the first three of these are always regular. c. All English verbs have an imperative form, though they are used with Stative verbs only if pragmatically sanctioned.3 d. The only irregular open class verb forms are past forms. According to chapter 1 then, there are no real irregularities in English verbs outside their past forms. In chapter 2, the point of departure is the well-known English verb pattern that productive finite and participial pasts are identical and that, even among irregular pasts, irregularity is decreasing in every generation. For all but about 100 stems in current Standard English there is only one past form, and in nonstandard speech the number is even fewer: he (should have) found/ took/ hid those books.4 This limitation of two distinct pasts to only irregular forms suggests they are simply positional allomorphs of a single Past morpheme, one immediately preceded by a null I (took, hid) and the second (taken, hidden) occurring elsewhere.5 These rather obvious and well-known patterns indicate that English has only a single Past morpheme, an idea at odds with both traditional and generative treatments. In this case, I can discern no established belief that conflicts with this finding. (In chapter 1, in contrast, our main claim contradicted the near article of faith that finite copulas must be verbs.) Re past tense forms, the culprit seems to simply be inertia, a lack of interest in what one can conclude in formal terms about this salient simplifying trend. 2 For be, the agreeing and past finite forms can informally be taken to be Ø. 3 A final interesting semantic consequence of the extension of I in chapter 1 to finite copulas is that I is the basic locus of ±Irrealis, and that +Irrealis (M) turns out to be the unmarked mood of a clause. Marked subclasses (for example, plural nouns, non-locational prepositions) are fewer in number and more likely to have overt morphology, and from this perspective Realis forms of I are more marked than Irrealis. Thus, modals are unmarked and finite tenses are marked. 4 In Standard English: He (should have) found those books, vs. He (should have) taken/ hidden/ *took/ *hid those books. 5 Section 2.7.3 in the text shows that the apparent “difference in meaning” between the two Past allomorphs of V is due to context (having different items in the preceding I), and not to different feature specifications.

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The unity of a single Past morpheme immediately highlights the issue of how to restrictively specify morphosyntactic allomorphy, so the bulk of chapter 2 makes and justifies proposals about structuring lexical entries for irregular verbs. The chapter’s special empirical focus is the Standard English verb have, because its entry must express so many grammatically differentiated uses, perhaps more than any other English morpheme (have eaten, have got, had better, have a walk, have a house, have to eat, have it out, have John help us,, . . .). But the main underlying point remains that there is a single English Past, which in turn brings out just how non-trivial it is to actually formalize the Conjecture of Borer (1984), the claim that language-particular grammars reduce to restrictive and exact formulations of lexical entries for grammatical morphemes. Chapter 3 deals with placing formal limits on morphosyntactic irregularity. For probably not so innocent reasons, this topic has not attracted much attention. It is by now a truism that fully scientific models must link falsifiable and non-trivial formalized statements to ample supporting data. But in academia, there are strong counter-tendencies. There is no shortage of partisans of empirically unsupported formalizations (that is, of formalized speculation), nor of partisans of extensive data collection subject to no predictive or restrictive theory (that is, empiricism). Both speculators and empiricists have good reasons to cherish the existence of untheorized linguistic exceptions. Speculators feel the latter are trivial; they are outside the domain of science and hence unworthy of attention. And for empiricists, exceptions show that supposed predictive statements are in reality at best tendencies, “clines”, “continuums” and “squishes”, which reveal the supposed essence of empiricist science, collections of data that cannot be accounted for by predictive statements. Neither of these distortions of scientific thinking has an interest in reducing or explaining grammatical irregularities. The approach of this volume, however, considers exceptions to be its adversary, and aims to curtail the configurations that allow them. Bound inflection and stem allomorphy (mouse/ mice; speak/ spoke/ spoken) is an area where grammatical traditions claim that irregularity is rampant. To counter this, chapter 3 first shows that within the open class lexicon (a concept further developed in chapter 6), these grammatical irregularities are limited to expressing certain local structures, interior to a newly defined concept of “neighborhoods”. Outside these formally defined syntactic domains, many regular inflections can be characterized and studied, even though (not accidentally) traditional linguists have given them other names, such as contractions and clitics. Such special nomenclature only obscures their regularity. After the discussion of neighborhoods, section 3.5 turns to formulating a lexical dichotomy that further restricts the range of possible irregularity, that of a Primary and a Secondary Vocabulary. The distinction between them is based

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largely on phonology, in particular on the newly defined “Extended Monosyllables”. This division turns out to be highly predictive, because the Secondary Vocabulary (in English, that half or more of the lexicon which expands according to de Saussure throughout a speaker’s life) tolerates neither morphosyntactic irregularity nor more complex syntactic selection. Hence, what in terms of Lakatoš (1978) begins as an “Auxiliary Hypothesis” (for circumscribing morphological irregularity) ends up with “Excess Content”: a predictive account for data of an entirely different sort, namely the extent of English “phrasal verbs”. So, while morphosyntactic irregularity exists in English, it meets its match in this volume’s novel theoretical concepts of syntactic neighborhoods and the primary lexicon. Outside the (shrinking number of) special forms limited to the primary lexicon and permitted only within local syntactic neighborhoods, all of English verbal morphosyntax is fully regular.

7.2 The chapters on non-finite forms: Predicting their distributions English is remarkable for its range of non-finite clause types, and the second three chapters describe and systematize this variety. The salient new aspect of this book’s treatment is how the concept “Extended Projection” (chapter 4) should be modified to cover these non-finite clauses. A basic non-finite VP can project directly not only to a finite IP but also to the other XPs, namely DPs (gerunds), APs (participles), and PPs (to-infinitives). All three categories have different distributions, and accordingly, so do the non-finite clause types. Neither traditional nor generative accounts of English non-finite VP types seem fully aware that the non-finite paradigms they describe so closely resemble the distributions of the just mentioned different phrasal types (DPs, APs, and PPs). Perhaps most obviously, so-called gerundive VPs have the syntactic behavior of noun phrases (DPs), as partially described in Chomsky (1970). Extending this reasoning, chapter 4 shows that participles, in contrast, follow the patterns of AP distribution, and chapter 5 that to-infinitives are distributed in a third way, like PPs: they occur only in phrase-final and topicalized positions. Previous treatments of lexical selection have assumed that specifying verbal complements in English requires extensive and highly stipulative lexical statements. But chapter 4 here argues that all non-finite complements are selected by minimal variants of a single frame type, ___(F)^V, that is, a feature F concatenated with V, which, depending on the nature of the feature F, leads to several different configurations. This variety is brought about by the Universal Economy Principles of chapter 2 and utilized more extensively here. The variety of phrasal contexts is

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not random, but constrained by a revised version of Chomsky’s Theta Criterion, reformulated (section 4.5.4) as the Anti-Transitivity of Theta Relatedness. Although previous research on non-finite clauses is aware of their internal structural differences, it furnishes no clear understanding of the central empirical contrasts between infinitives and VPs based on V-ing. Chapter 5 derives their many distributional differences from the distinct phrasal categories that dominate them, as set up in chapter 4: gerunds are DPs, participles are APs, and unlike gerunds, infinitives are PPs.6 Once the focus is put on these categorial differences, over a dozen empirical tests, many of which are given here for the first time, confirm that English infinitives are never DPs; these arguments, which constitute the bulk of chapter 5, show that while infinitival phrases can be interpreted as subjects and objects of the lexical items that select them, these interpretations are not signs of their categorial status. Structural PPs (infinitives) as well as DPs (gerunds) can fulfill the sentence functions of both subjects and objects. What has blocked analysts from realizing this can be attributed to the enduring and misleading influence of formal logic on grammatical research. For the material of chapter 4, this was reflected in how analyses almost invariably represent embedded predications as clauses, either IPs or “small clause” XPs. Under the same influence, syntactic arguments of verbs have been felt to necessarily correspond to DPs.7 Then, since infinitives can be interpreted as subjects or objects, they must somehow also be DPs. The patterns of chapter 5 show that this long-standing assumption is simply wrong. Chapter 6 turns to English passive constructions, which always contain a non-finite participle. What previous generative analyses have missed is the central importance of this suffixed form’s grammatical category, Adjective. For example, this category plays at most a peripheral role in Chomsky’s analyses of the passive (1957, 1965, and 1981: ch. 2). But my view here is that this suffix’s category A is the linchpin of English passives, because it both prevents a surface subject from receiving the subject Theta Role, for example Agent, ordinarily assigned to the host verb’s external argument, and at the same time, it is the category Adjective of -en that sets up the characteristic subject-object co-indexing of analytic passives. This configuration results from the combined effects of two widely supported UG principles, Alternative Realization by the passive suffix of the object category 6 Given the tradition claiming that infinitival to is not a P, the proposal in chapter 4 that it is might seem to require more than minimal justification. The arguments throughout chapter 5 to this effect then serve to confirm this claim. 7 This reasoning, the expectation that phrasal arguments are noun phrases, is explicit in both Rosenbaum (1967) and Ross (1967).

7.3 Valedictory 

 249

D (guaranteeing a DP gap in the VP) and the co-reference of subjects and predicate adjectives. These two agreements act in tandem to force the co-reference of the subject and object DPs of a passive verb. This characteristic co-indexing in passive is thus derived here from independently supported mechanisms of UG and moreover turns out to obviate any “movement of object to subject”.8 In the analysis of chapter 6, subject-object co-indexing is syntactically shared by both verbal and adjectival passives and is brought about by the same devices (AR and predicate adjective agreement). This unified analysis undermines any proposal that one of them is “more lexical” than the other. What differentiates them is that in the derivation of (only) verbal passives, the suffix –en is rendered inert in LF by the Cancellation Feature Ø introduced and independently motivated in chapter 1. This feature difference between the suffixes in the two types of passives (A vs. AØ) explains not only their distinct semantics, but also accurately predicts for the first time several contrasting paradigms: the distinct behaviors of the two passives with respect to their obligatory vs. optional logical subjects, the applicability of the Case Filter, verb-object idioms and which verbs select each type.

7.3 Valedictory In each of this volume’s six core chapters, I have been able to formulate, modify and extend some very general hypotheses about the structures and proper analysis of English verbal morphosyntax so that the new hypotheses account for a significantly broader range of data than previous work (the “excess content” of Auxiliary Hypotheses). In most cases, the explanations are framed in terms of principles of Universal Grammar. (7-2) Summary of Main Hypotheses Chap

Descriptive Generalizations

Universal Grammar Used

1

All and only morphemes with the Alternative Realization (= feature NICE properties, including finite Dissociation); the Cancellation Feacopulas, are closed class lexical ture Ø items of category I.

8 I don’t claim to have solved how to fully formalize abstract agreement, co-indexing, and co-reference. But clearly in general, constituents which grammatically agree don’t have distinct references.

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2

Finite Past –ed and Active Participle The canonical (interpreted) posi–en are allomorphs of just a single tion of all English PASTs is on the highest interpreted V in VP. PAST morpheme.

3

Irregular morphology and selec- Irregular morphology on X only in tion of Directional P (phrasal verbs) X’s “neighborhood”; defined using occur only in a newly defined Primary Extended Projections. Vocabulary.

4

VP complements of open class V must be minimal Extended Projections (EP); they can’t be bare VP. In some EPs, Economy excludes internal subjects.

5

Infinitives never occur as structural Principles of associate-expletive DPs, though they express the same binding for PP/CP associates, which include verbal clauses. grammatical relations as DPs.

6

The Cancellation Feature is optional Only closed class lexical heads on the participle suffix AØ, giving can select heads that are empty rise to verbal passive and indirect (= uninterpreted) in LF or PF. passive paradigms.

Anti-transitivity of theta-relatedness. Economy Conditions formulated to determine types of complements.

In formulating what I think are the best current versions of these hypotheses, I have not hesitated to discard imprecise or non-predictive variants of four quite widely accepted concepts in recent generative work. – My definition of a Subject Phrase dispenses with any implicit or explicit requirement that a subject and a predicate must form a syntactic constituent excluding other constituents (section 4.5). Thus, the two underlined complements of V in Mary found Bill nearby watching TV are a subject-predicate pair, but do not form a constituent at any derivational level. – The two conflicting versions of the Theta Criterion in Chomsky (1981: 36, 335) are respectively too strong and too weak; I replace them with the Anti-Transitivity of Theta Relatedness (section 4.5.4). – The Extended Projection Principle (section 4.5) applies only to Vs that are heads of words and hence not to Vs in adjectival passives, whose heads are As. – The Case Filter plays no role in verbal passives, as justified in section 6.4.1.

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 251

In the course of formulating and arguing for my hypotheses, most of this volume leaves aside some terms and principles found in the generative literature, for example, small clauses and a limitation to binary branching trees. I have explained at various points in the text why I think they are unneeded, inaccurate, or misleading. Surprisingly, it turns out that transformational movement seems to be needed only in accounting for movement to peripheral positions outside clauses.9 – I replace movement to subject in all analytic passives (chapter 6) by an unstipulated combination of Alternative Realization on A of an object D and co-indexing of predicate adjectives with their subjects. – Raising to subject position in a higher clause is more parsimoniously viewed as a subcase of control, where the embedded predicate has no referential or structural subject closer than the controller. – Extraposition as a movement is replaced (chapter 5) by principles of expletive binding that interpret embedded clauses generated in clause-final position. – Romance clitics on verbs never result from movement to their surface positions, but are generated in situ by virtue of Alternative Realization (Emonds 2017a). If the preceding conclusions are valid, and since peripheral positions do not interact with English verbal morphosyntax, the text has not dealt with concepts mainly used in accounting for movement to peripheral positions, such as cyclic domains, phases, subjacency, and feature checking/ structure preservation. Some ideas on how these concepts might relate to issues treated in this volume, in particular raising and control of infinitival subjects, can be found in Čakanyová and Emonds (2017). Throughout this volume, in addition to formulating and empirically justifying its hypotheses, among others those in (7-2), I have suggested that various methodological pitfalls have slowed progress in making English verbal morphosyntax into a scientific discipline. These include: – relying uncritically on several traditional grammatical assumptions (chs. 1 and 2), – downplaying the need to explain and eliminate as many seeming exceptional forms as possible (ch. 3), – accepting theoretical conjectures that lack independent justification, such as defining subjects as sole sisters of predicates (ch. 4),

9 This is also the conclusion of Koster (1978a) and Bresnan (1982), though the latter’s formal devices used to replace passive and raising movements are different than mine.

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expecting that basic phrasal categories mimic/ reproduce those of predicate calculus (chs. 4 and 5), accepting long-standing analyses in which certain morphemes, though obligatory, seem to have no theoretical role (ch. 6).10

Whether or not such tendencies have actually slowed or blocked progress is an open question, although ultimately this is only a peripheral concern in the sociology of science. What is more important than identifying various methodological pitfalls is that this volume has amply justified several improved and novel analyses of the English verbal system by using the only efficient and reliable method for advancing linguistic science: that of testing predictions using the grammatical intuitions of native speakers. In spite of the attacks on this method, a central contribution of Noam Chomsky, I feel that the results of this volume show that this generative method remains the surest path to progress in theoretical syntax.

10 For example, the infinitival particle to has no syntactic or semantic role in most Government and Binding analyses: it fails to assign nominative case and simply lacks the NICE properties (Čakanyová 2018: ch. 2). Similarly, the Adjective category of the verbal passive participle, once it is shown to not block Case Assignment, has no other role in these analyses.

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Index of cited authors Aarts, Bas 4 Abida, Rafika 121–123, 190 Abney, Steven 38–39, 42 Abraham, Werner 121 Åfarli, Tor. 3, 201–202, 206–207, 215, 218 Alexiadou, Artemis 226 Alsina, Alex 110 Anagnostopoulou, Elena 205, 213, 215 Anderson, Stephen 89, 133 Aoyagi, Hiroshi 56 Aronoff, Mark 65–66, 82, 133, 207

Faarlund, Jan Terje 111 Fillmore, Charles 230 Fraser, Bruce 103–106, 108 Freidin, Robert 203–204 Fukui, Naoki 6, 128

Baker, Mark 3, 19, 23–24, 34, 110–111, 213 Baltin, Mark 119 Biber, Douglas 4 Boeckx, Cedric 6 Borer, Hagit 3, 5–7, 60, 108, 111, 246 Bresnan, Joan 58, 215, 251 Breuning, Benjamin 213–214, 219, 222 Burzio, Luigi 1

Haegeman, Liliane 4, 148, 232 Halle, Morris 24, 26–27, 46, 51, 57, 82, 99 Harris, Zellig 10 Henle, Robert 94 Henry, Alison 14 Herriman, Jennifer 109 Higgins, Francis 179 Hoffman, T. Ronald 47 Holmberg, Anders 110 Hornstein, Norbert 163 Horvath, Julia 202, 205 Huddleston, Rodney 4, 124

Caha, Pavel 84, 86 Čakanyová, Michaela 56, 72, 123, 139, 147, 160–161, 189, 251, 252 Černá, Lucie 127, 132, 135 Chomsky, Noam 1–3, 5–6, 9, 15, 17, 24–25, 27–28, 31, 40–41, 51, 54–55, 57, 59, 65, 69, 99–101, 106, 108, 128–132, 134, 141–143, 152–160, 163, 186–187, 190, 192, 205, 207, 213, 215, 218, 220, 234, 236–237, 244, 247–248, 250, 252 Chung, Sandra 110 Cinque, Guglielmo 51 Collins, Chris 65 Comrie, Bernard 5 De Clercq, Karen 86 Dékány, Eva 83 Den Dikken, Marcel 83, 110 Denison. David 21 Dokulil, Miloš 132 Duffley, Patrick 121–123, 190 Embick, David 24, 48, 82, 89, 205, 213, 215 https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110734379-010

Garcia, Erica 152 Green, Georgia 108 Greenbaum, Sydney 8 Grimshaw, Jane 83, 131–132 Guéron, Jacqueline 4

Ishihara, Roberta 139–140 Jackendoff, Ray 32–33, 143, 146 Jaeggli, Osvaldo 213, 218 Kallulli, Dalina 202 Karlik, Petr 219, 235, 240 Kayne, Richard  1,19, 92, 152, 234 Keenan, Edward 201–202, 206 Kimball, John 35 Koopman, Hilda 1 Koster, Jan 119, 141, 160, 163, 170, 251 Kratzer, Angelika 205, 213, 218 Kubo, Miori 119, 225 Kuroda, S.-Y 225 Laka, Itziar 55 Lakatoš, Imre 115–116, 247 Lakoff, George 31–32, 67–68

262 

 Index of cited authors

Langerová, Lucie 117 Larson, Richard 113 Leech, Geoffrey 8 Lees, Robert 33 Lefebvre, Claire 210 Levin, Beth 209, 222, 229 Lieber, Rochelle 26, 48, 59, 104, 215 Lightfoot, David 37 Lobeck, Anne 123 Machová, Dagmar 4 Marantz, Alec 24, 26, 46, 51, 57, 82, 89 May, Robert 119, 141, 160 Mchombo. Sam 110 McIntyre, Andrew 204 Meltzer-Asscher, Aya 202, 219 Nevins, Andrew 29 Newmeyer, Frederick 6, 31 Newman, Elise 57 Newson, Mark 20, 37 Noyer, Ralph 24, 48, 82 O’Grady, William 224 Ostler, Rosemarie 34, 110, 113, 222 Ouhalla, Jamal 6 Palmer, Frank 4, 19, 33 Parrott, Jeffrey 29 Pesetsky, David 94, 111 Platzack, Christer 110 Pollard, Carl 232 Pullum, Geoffrey 4, 87–89, 124 Quirk, Randolph 4, 8 Rappaport, Malka 209, 222, 229 Riemsdijk, Henk van 23, 64, 128, 241 Rizzi, Luigi 51, 120

Roberge, Yves 93 Roberts, Ian 32–35, 202, 213 Roeper, Thomas 127, 144, 159, 160 Rosenbaum, Peter 119, 122, 125–126, 155, 162, 163, 186, 193, 194, 248 Ross, John 9, 28, 31–32, 67, 69, 170–171, 176, 194, 232, 248 Sag, Ivan 22, 232 Schäfer, Florian 226 Schilling, Natalie 36 Schoorlemmer, Maaike 218, 235, 240 Selkirk, Elizabeth 104 Siegel, Dorothy 217 Sleeman, Petra 204 Sobin, Nicholas 209 Speas, Margaret 6, 128 Stowell, Timothy 5, 47, 48, 144, 147, 158, 196, 231 Svartvik, Jan 8 Szécsényi, Krisztina 37 Siloni, Tal 202, 205 Tallerman, Maggie 103 Torrego, Esther 94 Vanden Wyngaerd, Guido 86 Veselovská, Ludmila 19, 22, 38, 52–53, 79, 120, 219, 235, 240 Wasow, Thomas 127, 131, 144, 159–160, 212–216, 218, 221–222, 229 Williams, Edwin 48, 51, 147 Wolfram, Walt 36 Wurmbrand, Susi 145, 195 Zagona, Karen 46, 71, 141 Zwicky, Arnold 87–89, 197

Index of definitions, principles, tables and trees Active participle distribution. (2-10). Principle 49, 58 Action Adjectives. Discussion. 132–134 Adjacency (structural). (1-40), (2-29). Principle 27, 60 Adverbials of Past Time (co-occurrence). (2-49). Principle 72 Agent Specification. (4-49). Principle 143 Agreeing verbal inflection. (1-9), (6-9). Principle 12, 205 Agreement effects in passives, from ch. 6. Discussion 249 Alternative Realization/ Dissociation (AR). (1-34), (3-6), Definition 24, 82 Alternative Realization of Realis (1-35). Tree 25 Alternative Realization of Past. (2-45a). Tree 70 Anti-transitivity of Theta-Relatedness. (4-61). Principle 150 Audiences for this book. List 3 Analytic/ Secondary monosyllabic adjectives. (3-36). List 101 Auxiliary hypotheses. Definition 247 Auxiliary verb system (key points). (1-62). List 42 Auxiliary Verbs in English. (2-42). Principle 68 Background hypotheses assumed. List 3 Bare infinitives (distribution).(4-8). Principle 120–121 Be and have Raising (1.46), Discussion 31–33 Be Raising consequences (1-47), List 33 Cancellation feature. (1-16). Definition 15 Canonical positions of features. (2-16). Definition 52 Case and verbal clauses. Discussion 188–189 Chapter previews. List 2 Cleft sentences diagnostic for verbal clauses. Discussion 180–181 Complements of manner of speaking verbs. (5-89), (5-94). Examples 197–198 Contractions in English. (3-19). List 90 https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110734379-011

Control, optional vs. obligatory. Discussion 161–164 Coordinate semi-clause clause subjects. (5-53) (5-54). Examples 180 Co-ordinate subjects. Discussion 179–180 Czech adjectival inflection. Discussion 86 D projection modifiers of gerunds. (4-16) Examples 125 Derived adjectives (properties). (4-26). List 131 Derived nominals (properties). (4-25). List 131 DIR feature added to subcategorized phrases. (5-75). Definition 190 DIR feature interpreted as Irrealis. (5-77). Tree 191 DIR selected by primary vocabulary. (3-48). Discussion 107–108 Discarded theoretical concepts. List 250 Dissociation. (1-34), (3-6). Definition 24, 82 Ditransitive secondary verbs: (3-50). List 109 Double object properties. (3.59). List 114 Double object verbs. (3-47). Tree 107 Economy of Alternative Realization. (2-39). Principle 66 Economy of Representation (2-38), (4-40). Principle 65, 138, 187 Economy of Representation (including words) (1-44). Principle 29 Empty lexical heads in phrases. (1-5). Examples 10 Event Nominals. Discussion 132–134 Expletive associate binding (5-66). Principle 184 Expletive-associate (interpretation).(5-61). Principle 182 Expletive pronouns. (5-60). Definition 182 Extended Monosyllables. (3-33) Definition 98–99 Extended Projection Principle (EPP). (4-46), (5-7). Principle 141, 160 Extended Projections, from ch. 4. Discussion 248

264 

 Index of definitions, principles, tables and trees

Extended Projections (EP). (4-19). List 127 Extended Projections. (3-11), Tree 85 Extended Projections, minimal. (4-22), Definition 130 Extended Projections of lexical heads. (4.20). Definition 128 Finite Past distribution. (2-9). Principle 49 Focused gerunds vs. non-focusable participles. (4-18). List 126-127 French clitic features. Discussion 93 Functional head properties. (1-53). List 37 Fusion, generalized. (3-16). Principle 88 Fusion, local. (2-37), (3-4). Principle 65, 82 Gerunds and participles: verbs with –ing. (4-2). Examples 118 Gerund distribution. (5-21). Principle 167–168 Gerund internal structure. (4-12), (4-36), (5-2), (5-4). Trees 124, 136, 157–158 Had better vs. main verb have. Discussion 74–75 Have got vs. main verb got. Discussion 75–77 Have in the I position. (2-62). Principle 77 Have in the V position vs. have in the I position. (2-58), (2.59), (2.60). Examples 76–77 Head properties. (1-4). List 10 Heads selecting participles. (4-13). List 125 Hypotheses (main ones in the book). (7-2). List 249–250 I (Nine signs of I). (4-1). List 117 Idiomatic phrasal verbs. (3-41), (3-42). Examples 104–105 Indirect objects and verbal clauses. Discussion 175–178 Indirect objects without Ps. (3-49). Examples 108–109 Infinitival internal structure. (5-3), (5-8). Trees 157, 160 Infinitival relatives. Discussion 141 Infinitives, interpretation. Discussion 122–123 Infinitives, introduced by to or bare infinitives. (4-3) Examples 118

Inflections, general properties (3-18). List 89 Inflections, local. (3-8). Definition 83 Invisible Category Principle. (1-36). Principle 26 Irrealis feature, canonical position. (2-17). Principle 52 Irrealis feature, secondary interpretation. (2-45b). Tree 70 Irregular finite pasts. (2-1). List 46 Irregular participial pasts. (2-2). List 46 Irregular plural nouns. (2-36), (3-5). List 64, 82 Irregular verbs, loss of third forms. (2-44). Discussion 50 Lexical entry symbols. Discussion 26–27 Lexical Heads. (4-35). Definition 135 Lexical insertion: structural location. (1-37). Principle 26 Literal phrasal verbs. (3-44). Examples 105 Local inflection properties. (3-17). List 89 Manner of speaking verbs. Discussion 197–198 Minimal Structure. (4-6). Definition 120, 138 Morphosyntactic irregularity limits, from ch.3. Discussion 246 Neighborhoods. (3-7). Definition 83 Neighborhoods of regular inflections. (3-27). Table 95 NICE properties of I (1-25), (1-26), (1-29), (1-31). List 21–22 Non-finite clauses, (4-5). Definition 119 North Germanic Applicative. (3-54). Principle 111 Overt subjects of adjunct and subject clauses. (5-9), (5-10). Examples 161 P-less double objects. (3-53), (3-57). Trees 110, 113 P-less double objects (conditions). (3-52). List 110 Paired Bound and Free Forms. (3-24), (3-26). Discussion 91–92, 94

Index of definitions, principles, tables and trees 

Participial adjuncts. (4.42). List 139 Participial internal structure. (4-11), Trees 124 Parts of speech. Discussion 43–45 Passivized verb-object idioms. (6-49), (6-50). Examples 229–230 Passivization of gerunds but not participles. (4-17), Examples 126 Past events. (2-4). Principle 47 Past feature, canonical position. (2-18). Principle 53 Past feature, surface positions. (2-41). List 67 Past lexical entries and structures. (2-33). Table 62 Phonological Opacity. (3-10). Principle 84 Phrasal verb properties. (3-40). List 104 Phrasal verbs in primary vocabulary. (3-45). Principle 106 Polysyllabic primary vocabulary. (3-34), (3-35). Lists 100 Possessives and verbal clauses. Discussion 178 Pragmatic Completeness. (1-33), Principle 23 Pragmatically sanctioned imperative/ progressive stative verbs. (1.15). Examples 15 Presupposed background readings. List 4–5 Primary verb selection condition. (3-45). Principle 113 Primary vs. Secondary Vocabulary. (3-31). Table 97 Primary vs. Secondary Vocabulary (extended). (3-60). Table 114 Purpose clauses. Discussion 140 Raising of DPs. Discussion 161–164 Realis feature, canonical position. (2-17). Principle 52 Reference Time. (Secondary Tense) (2-48). Principle 72 Regular properties of a lexical category. (3-2). Definition 80 Regular verbs, number of forms. (2-15). Principle 51 Regular verbs, number of forms. (2-34). List 62

 265

Regular vs. irregular inflections in English, Czech and French. (3-3). Table 81 Root clause configurations (5-34). Principle 173 Regularities of English verb, from ch. 1. (7-1). List 245 Root clause configurations (5-34). Principle 173 Secondary Vocabulary (exceptionless properties). (3-61). List 116 Selecting for-to clauses. (5-8). Tree 193 Semantic Opacity. (3-14). Principle 87 Semantic (Theta) Role assignment. (3-56). Principle 112 Semi- clause, (4-5). Definition 119 Semi-clause arguments requiring infinitives. (5-74). List 189 Semi-clause arguments with internal subjects. (5-96). List 200 Semi-clause objects of Prepositions. (5-19). Examples 166 Semi-clause subjects of embedded clauses. (5-22). Examples 168 Single Past morpheme in English, from ch. 2. (7-11). Discussion 245–246 Spell Outs, irregular. (3-9). Principle 84 Stative verbs. (1-13). List 15 Subcategorization symbols. Discussion. p 59–60 Subjects in Gerund structure. (4-51). Tree 144 Subjects in Infinitive structure. (4-53). Tree 146 Subordinating conjunctions. Discussion 173–175 Tense feature, canonical position. (2-19). Principle 53 Theta-Related heads in participles. (4-60). Definition 149 Theta-Relatedness. (4-50). Definition 143 Theta-Relatedness in participles. (4-62). Trees 150–151 To-infinitive structure. (4-9) Tree 122 Topicalization as a Root Transformation. (5-24). Principle 170

266 

 Index of definitions, principles, tables and trees

Verbal clause. (5-20). Definition 166 Verbal clause complements (not interpreted as DPs). (5-84). List 195 Verbal clause distribution. (5-35). Principle 173 Verbal clause subjects: excluded contexts. (5-23), (5-26). List 169–170 Verbal inflections. (1-9), (1-10), (1-11). List 12–13

Verbal subjects. (4-48) Definition 142 Verbs: properties of regular verbs. (1-17). List 16 Vocabulary, Primary and a Secondary, from ch. 3. Discussion 246–247 WH for indirect questions. (5-79). Tree 192 WH specifiers (interpretations). (2-50). List 73

Index of English lexical entries Agreeing verbal inflection (1-9), (6-9) 12, 205 Applicative suffix for North Germanic (3-58) 113 Clausal Negation (2-24) 56 Copula be (1-42) 28 Default derivational suffix –ing (4-32) 134 Derivational and inflectional –ing (combined) (4-38) 136 Do-support (1-59) 41 Finite copulas (1-43) 29 Finite Tense suffixes (1-38), (2-44) 26, 69 Gerund and participial suffix –ing (4-37) 136

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110734379-012

Have in the I position (2-62) 77–78 Infinitival to (4-10) 122 Irregular Past finite verb (2-20) 54 Irregular Past verb, single form (2-31) 61 Irregular Past verbs, two forms (2-32) 61 Modals (1-23) 20 Passive Participle (6-26) 217 Past Tense (2-12) 49, 54, 59 Perfect Auxiliary (2-43) 69 Unmarked Verb do: combined entry (1-61)  41, 69