Foundations of Syntax Lecture Slides 4
Foundations of Syntax Lecture Slides 4
Foundations of Syntax Lecture Slides 4
Functional Categories
Nathaniel Torres
BBN-ANG-151
Wednesday, October 4
Functional Verbal Categories
English has three auxiliary verbs: be, do and have. (Also some evidence to
suggest that get can also function as a kind of auxiliary in certain
constructions.)
The have auxiliary occurs with the perfect tenses of English:
John has done his chores.
John had done his chores before his mom came home.
The first instance of have is called the present perfect tense.
The second instance of have is called the past perfect (pluperfect).
Auxiliary Verbs (cont.)
There are a number of different moods found cross-linguistically and they are
not always separate words.
Many Turkic and Uralic languages have a series of suffixes that perform the
function of the various modal auxiliaries found in English do.
We can take Turkish and Hungarian as examples.
Mood (cont.)
Hungarian can express three moods via suffixation: the subjunctive mood (archaic
in English), the Potential mood, and the Conditional.
The subjunctive marker in Hungarian is –j which is subject to phonological rules
conditioning sound changes:
Azt akarja, hogy men-j-ek az iskolába.
that want.3SG that go-SUBJ-1SG the school.
‘S/he wants me to go to school.’
The potential suffix is given with the endings –hat/-het, subject to vowel harmony:
Panna itt marad-hat, ameddig csak akar.
Panna here stay-POT as long as only want.3SG
‘Panna may stay here as long as she wants.’
Mood (cont.)
The Hungarian conditional mood is expressed via the suffixes –na/-ne or –ná/-
né:
Megcsinál-ná-m a munkát, ha több időm len-ne.
do-COND-1SG the work if more time.1SG be-COND.3SG
‘If I had more time, I would do the work.’
We can therefore see that Hungarian makes productive use of suffixes to
convey meanings that individual words do in English.
Let’s now take a look at Turkish.
(Some) Turkish Suffixes
The evidential mood marker is given by the suffix –mIş and indicates a number of
things, but primarily means that something was heard second hand.
Türkiye Hükumeti tekrar ücretler kaldır-mış.
Turkey Government.3SG again wage.PL raise-EVID
‘Apparently, the Turkish government have raised wages again.’
Finally, the optative mood, given by –(y)A, indicates a kind of wish, or can
indicate purpose:
Konumu göster-sin diye sana haritayı verdim.
Location.DEF.ACC show-OPT.2SG so that you.DAT map.DEF.ACC
give.PERF.1SG
‘I gave you the map so that you could show/indicate the location.’
Properties of Auxiliaries and Modals
English modals occur in complementary distribution with one another, that is,
only one can ever occur in a clause.
He may go to the store.
But:
*He may can go to the store.
In contrast, auxiliaries can cooccur with ease:
He has been working hard to finish his thesis.
In addition to this, auxiliaries can cooccur with modals:
He might have been working on the thesis, but I’m not sure.
Modals vs. Auxiliaries (cont.)
In action:
The dog
That house
Which book
The use of determiners is tied to how information is introduced into a
discourse.
One important concept to consider is bridging. Bridging is when new
information is introduced into a dialogue via an indefinite (or bare) noun
phrase. Subsequent mentions of this noun, after it has been mentioned in a
dialogue, will appear with the definite article.
Bridging and Definiteness
If we think about the previous two functional categories, we can observe that
modals and auxiliaries are verbal modifiers to verbs exclusively, and
determiners are modifiers to nouns exclusively.
Is there a category that can modify both categories? Yes, degree adverbs.
Consider:
Too difficult
I read the book rather quickly.
As these can appear with verbs and adjectives, we can posit that they have
the features [+F, +N, +V].
Complementizers
There is a typological basis for this as in the last example we can see that
even though for is a complementizer here, it is still assigning accusative case
to the subject of the embedded clause.
Heather waited for him to leave.
We can see that if we tried to replace him here with the nominative, the
sentence would be rendered ungrammatical:
*Heather waited for he to leave.
This obligatory case assignment is evidence of this dual nature of
complementizers and prepositions.
Complementizers (cont.)
If we take these observations into account, then we can define the features of
complementizers as follows: [+F, -N, -V].
As complementizers do not pattern with nouns, adjectives or with verbs they lack the
features associated with them.
Finally, there are two kinds of clauses that complementizers can take: finite and non-
finite.
Complementizers like that and if are required to take finite clauses, which means the
verb in the embedded clause must be conjugated.
Complementizers like for are required to take non-finite clauses, which means that the
verb in the embedded clause must be an infinitive (to X).
So:
I know that this class is difficult./*I know that this class to be difficult.
I waited for Anna to arrive./*I waited for Anna arrives.