1. Lecture 3: Functional Phrases
Syntax
Lecture 3:
Functional Phrases

2. The independence of syntax and semantics
Two famous sentences:
Colourless green ideas sleep furiously
The child seems sleeping
The first is grammatical, but ill formed semantically
The second has a well formed meaning, but is ungrammatical

3. What is semantically important is not necessarily syntactically important
Q: Is a VP a VERB phrase because the verb carries the important meaning?:
‘flew to Paris’
is more about ‘flying’ than it is about ‘Paris’ or ‘to’
A: No!:
‘is tall’
‘tall’ is more important than ‘is’
But this is still a VP

4. Syntax determines syntactic phenomena
A VP is a VERB phrase, because the verb is the syntactic head (not necessarily semantic head)
The King flew to Paris, allegedly
The King is tall, allegedly

5. The Nominal Phrase What is the head of the phrase:
‘that table’?
The usual reaction is:
‘table’
But
Only because ‘table’ carries more meaning than ‘that’
This is not a good reason

6. Pronouns are determiners
Recall
Most determiners can be used as pronouns
That table is white – that is white
Some tables are green – some are green
Some pronouns can be used as determiners
We humanitarians
But pronouns replace nominal phrases
They have the same distribution as them:
My friend is rich – he is rich
Everyone likes my friend – Everyone likes him
So pronouns are nominal phrases
= a one word phrase containing just a head

7. The one word phrase
The head determines the nature of the phrase

8. If a pronoun is a determiner, then this phrase is a DP

9. If this is a DP, then all nominal phrases are DPs
The Determiner is the head
The NP is the complement
Headed by the Noun

10. DPs without determiners
Expressions like John and people have the same distribution as pronouns:
John likes Mary – he likes Mary
We spoke to people – we spoke to them
So they are also DPs
But they don’t contain determiners
But they have properties that determiners provide:
A man / the man = indefinite / definite
people / John = indefinite / definite
There is a man / * the man in the room
There are people / is John in the room

11. Phonologically empty Ds

12. Sentences What is the head of a sentence?
The gardener will mow the lawn
Only sentences distribute like sentences
There are no one word sentences
So it is difficult to identify a single word as the head on these grounds
There may be other ways to do it

13. Types of sentences Some sentences are finite:
They can contain a tense or a modal auxiliary:
The gardener mowed the lawn
The gardener may mow the lawn
They have nominative pronoun subjects:
He mowed/may mow the lawn
* Him mowed/may mow the lawn
They may or may not be embedded
I think the gardener mowed the lawn

14. Types of sentences Some sentences are non-finite: * They contain to:
(I expect) The gardener to mow the lawn
They have accusative pronoun subjects:
I expect him to mow the lawn
* I expect he to mow the lawn
They must be embedded
I expect the gardener to mow the lawn *

15. Types of sentences Sentences contain one:
Tense, or
Modal, or
Infinitival ‘to’
They cannot have combinations of these:
* the gardener will mows the lawn
* the gardener will to mow the lawn
* the gardener to mowed the lawn
These things are in complementary distribution
So they belong to the same category
We call the category Inflection (I)
This is the functional verbal category [+F, -N, +V]

16. The type of sentence is determined by what Inflection it contains
The gardener will mow the lawn
The gardener mowed the lawn
The gardener to mow the lawn
The head determines the nature of the phrase
So this is evidence that the Inflection is the head of the clause
Finite
Non-finite

17. Clauses are IPs The head is the Inflection
So the clause is IP
The specifier is the subject
The complement is the VP

18. Comparing DP and IP

19. What about the specifier of the DP?
A phrase which precedes a noun is the possessor:
[DP The gardener’s] lawnmower
The possessor is related to the subject:
The police observed the criminals
The police’s observation of the criminals
This suggests that the possessor is the specifier of the DP

20. A DP with a specifier

21. Final comparison