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Minimalist Concepts and Trees

The document summarizes the key concepts of Merge, light verbs, inclusiveness condition, and derivations in Minimalist syntax. It provides examples of how lexical items are merged to form syntactic units based on a numeration. Light verbs are distinguished from lexical verbs by having less semantic content but contributing functional elements to clauses. The inclusiveness condition states that no new information can be introduced in a derivation beyond what is present in the numeration. Several examples of derivations are provided step-by-step to illustrate how lexical items from a numeration are merged based on their features.

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Atiq Aslam
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69 views

Minimalist Concepts and Trees

The document summarizes the key concepts of Merge, light verbs, inclusiveness condition, and derivations in Minimalist syntax. It provides examples of how lexical items are merged to form syntactic units based on a numeration. Light verbs are distinguished from lexical verbs by having less semantic content but contributing functional elements to clauses. The inclusiveness condition states that no new information can be introduced in a derivation beyond what is present in the numeration. Several examples of derivations are provided step-by-step to illustrate how lexical items from a numeration are merged based on their features.

Uploaded by

Atiq Aslam
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as ODT, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Coursework 1 a. Merge Merge is an operation through which basic syntactic units are formed.

This operation consists of selecting an item from the numeration and combining it with another item from the numeration or previous unit which has already been formed through a merger operation. For example, two lexical items hit and Bill are merged to form the unit hit Bill. Then John is merged to the previous unit to form the sentence John hit Bill. b. Light verbs Light verbs are distinguished from lexical verbs by its comparatively lac of semantic content. Though light verbs are similar to auxiliaries by virtue of its contribution in clauses being predominately functional rather than semantic. !owever, unli e auxiliaries they have theta mar ing properties. "erbs which serve as light verbs can, nonetheless, also serve as lexical and auxiliary verbs. Do, make and take are examples of such light verbs. c. #nclusiveness $ondition #nclusiveness condition state that no information can be introduced in the derivation of a sentence that is not present in the numeration. This principle excludes items such as bar levels, traces, indices and other new items during of operation of $ !L %$homs y, &''(). Therefore, analysing will survive as t*bar %intermediate pro+ection of T %will)) and the sentence I will survive as T, %maximal pro+ection) of T violates this principle. -a) .umeration /everyone, giggled, T, v0

T,

., 5veryone
,67 .63ing $6.4M

T1 v,

T
,23T .4M 5,,

., everyone

v1

v giggled

", giggled

-b) .umeration / Bill, fell, v, T0 T,

,67 .63ing $6 .4M ,23T $6.4M 5,,

Bill

T1 v, v fell ., Bill ",

" Fell

-c) .umeration / !e, was, repairing, his, car, in, the, garage, v0 T,

!e
,67 .63ing $6.4M

T1

T was
,23T ,67 .4M 5,,

v, v1 ., !e v repairing
$62$$

",

9, 9 his ., car
,67 .63ing $62$$

"1 " repairing , in


$664LB

,, 9,

9 the

., garage
,67 .63ing $64BL

The derivation starts with a numeration of items from the lexicon. The following are present 8 he, was, repairing, his, car, in, the, garage, v. Then, from the numeration the items garage and the are selected and merged to form the 9, the garage the being the head of the phrase. Then, in is selected and merged with the 9, to form ,,. The ., %garage *which is a minimal and maximal pro+ection) has uninterpretable obli:ue case feature which is chec ed and deleted with , 8 which also has an uninterpretable obli:ue case which is also deleted. 5arliness principle states that ;operations must apply as early as possible in a derivation< %=adford. >??'6>(>), therefore, the obli:ue case is chec ed and deleted as soon , is merged with 9,. Thereafter, repairing is selected and merged with ,, to form "1. Then, the determiner his and the noun car are selected and merged to form 9,. The 9, is in turn merged with "1 form ",. The light v is then selected and merged with the ", to form v1. the light v has a strong

affixal feature. To satisfy this feature repairing is copied from " and raised to light v. the original occurrence of the verb in " is conse:uently deleted %i.e. its ;phonetic features are given a null spellout and so are unpronounced< %=adford, >??', p.&-() The light v also has accusative case which is chec ed with the ., %car) and deleted. .ext, he is selected and merged with v1 to form v,. Was is then selected from the numeration and merged with v, to form T1. The T constituent has an strong 5,, feature which results in copying the ., he from the spec of v, and merging it with T1 to form T, and thus satisfying the 5,, feature on T % he in spec of v, is thus deleted). This raising allows the uninterpretable nominative case feature to chec ed and deleted 8 as the copy is withing the head*spec chec ing domain %note that the case chec ing for obli:ue and accusative cases causes some problems for the domain based chec ing theory as the case features are not chec ed within a head*spec nor head*head domains), as well as the interpretable phi*features of the ., to be chec ed. .ow the derivation is sent to ,F and LF to be interpreted.

-d) .umeration / they, had, willlingly, given, their, consent, to, the, police, v0 T, ., They
,67 .6,L $6.4M

T1

T had
,23T $6.4M 5,,

v,

., They

v1

29", willingly v given


$62$$

v1

",

9, 9 their ., consent
,67 .63ing $62$$

"1

" given , to
$64BL

,,

9,

9 the

., police
,67 .6,l $64BL

@e) .umeration / the>, boat, san , suddenly, in, sea, v, T0 T,

9, T1 9 The ., boat
,67 .63ing $6.4M

T
,23T $6.4M 5,,

v,

v san
$62$$

",

9, "1 9 The ., boat 29", suddenly " san , in


$64BL

"1 ,,

9,

9 the

., sea
,67 .63ing $64BL

Bibliograpgy $homs y, .. %&''(). Minimalist in:uiries6 the framewor . M#T 4,L &@. 9ept. of Linguistics6 M#T. =adford, 2. %>??'). Minimalist syntax. $ambridge6 $ambridge Aniversity ,ress.

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