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Cours 6
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PF ----------S-structure ----------LF
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Course 6
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Verb-movement
When the Inflection is a syntactic morpheme:
a) do-support: dummy do is introduced under the I node to provide a
root for the inflectional morpheme;
b) verb movement: head-to-head movement from V to I to provide a root
for the inflectional morpheme.
Verb-movement
Course 6
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Irregular verbs:
Interrogatives in English:
Affirmative: Miss Marple will write her letters in the garden in the
afternoon.
Course 6
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Yes/No question: Will Miss Marple write her letters in the garden in the
afternoon?
The interrogative feature triggers IC head-to-head movement, as the
C position is vacant
Course 6
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The interrogative
* Could you tell me/ I asked him whether will Miss Marple write her
letters in the garden in the afternoon?/.
is ungrammatical because whether occupies the coplementizer (C)
position, and, therefore, the C position is not vacant for the inflection
will to move to.
WH-movement:
The abstract interrogative feature triggers both wh-movement and
head-to-head movement in English.
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Course 6
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The sentence
*The student who that the examiner failed was Tom.
is ungrammatical because of The Doubly Filled COMP Filter: The Csystem may not contain both an overt wh-element and an overt
complementizer.
The Doubly Filled COMP Filter is not universal (Dutch, for example, allows
both a wh-word under spec-CP and a complementizer at the same time.
Therefore, The Doubly Filled COMP Filter is not a principle, but a
parameter of UG.
Bibliography:
Vivian Cook & Mark Newson (1996) Chomskys Universal Grammar,
second edition, Blackwell, pp 189-215 (you can find it in the Generative
Grammar dossier at the library)
Course 6
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