As we saw in
(1) | a. | * | We watch will that show. |
b. | We will never watch that show. | ||
c. | (Will you watch that show?) We will. |
The past tense, on the other hand, is expressed by a bound morpheme, ordinarily the suffix -ed, which combines with the verb to form a morphologically complex word.
(2) | a. | We watch-ed that show. | |
b. | * | We -ed never watch that show. | |
c. | * | (Did you watch that show?) We -ed. |
This dual expression of tense is typical of the Germanic language family, to which English belongs. In all of these languages, the future is expressed analytically (as two separate words), whereas the past is mostly2 expressed synthetically (as a single morphologically complex word).
The syntactic structure for sentences presented in
In addition to presenting the basic facts of verb raising and tense
lowering, we discuss a closely related and important topic in the grammar
of English: the do support that is found in sentences negated with
not (cf. He doesn't like okra with *He not likes
okra). We then review crosslinguistic evidence that verb raising is
linked (in ways that are still not fully understood) to the overt
expression of subject-verb agreement, and we discuss the process by which
the loss of agreement morphology in a language can result over time in the
loss of verb raising. The chapter concludes with a case study of the verb
movement parameter and related issues in the history of English. As we
will see, the diachronic interplay of the principles of Universal Grammar
with several contingent language-particular developments has resulted in
the intricate expression of the verb movement parameter that characterizes
modern standard English.
As we mentioned, the merger of tense and the verb when tense is
expressed synthetically can take place in two directions: either the verb
moves up to the tense morpheme, or the tense morpheme moves down to the
verb. We begin with the verb raising case. In this connection, it is
informative to consider the future tense in French, which is formed by
attaching suffixes to a verb's infinitive.
Verb raising: V movement to I
The French future tense
(3) | Future tense of chanter 'to sing' | Present tense of avoir 'to have' | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
je chanter-ai | 'I will sing' | j'ai | 'I have' | |||
tu chanter-as | 'you.sg will sing' | tu as | 'you.sg have' | |||
il, elle chanter-a | 'he, she will sing' | il, elle a | 'he, she has' | |||
nous chanter-ons | 'we will sing' | nous avons | 'we have' | |||
vous chanter-ez | 'you.pl will sing' | vous avez | 'you.pl have' | |||
ils, elles chanter-ont | 'they will sing' | ils, elles ont | 'they have' | |||
As is evident from (3), the future tense affixes are nearly identical to the present tense forms of the verb avoir 'to have', the only difference being that the affixes are truncated in the first and second person plural by comparison to the full two-syllable forms of avoir. This correspondence suggests that the future tense in French developed via a semantic shift from 'they have to V' to 'they will V'.3 In addition, and more immediately relevant for the present discussion, the originally free forms of avoir were reanalyzed as bound morphemes.4 The analytic roots of the synthetic French future tense thus indicate that the two ways of expressing tense are not just semantically parallel, but that they are also not as unrelated morphologically as they seem to be at first glance. In particular, what the French case suggests is that bound tense morphemes can project syntactic structure on a par with free tense morphemes. The elementary trees for the future tense suffixes in (3) are then as in (4).
(4) | a. | b. | c. | d. | e. | f. |
Given these elementary trees, sentences like (5) can be derived as follows.
(5) | Nous chanter-ons une chanson. we sing fut a song 'We will sing a song.' |
We begin with the elementary tree for the verb chanter in (6a) and substitute it as the complement of the elementary tree for the future tense marker to yield the structure in (6b).
(6) | a. | b. | |||||
Elementary tree for chanter | Substitute (6a) in elementary tree of future tense suffix (4d) |
The synthetic future tense form can then be created by moving the verb and adjoining it to the left of the tense morpheme. This is shown in the step-by-step derivation in (7).
(7) | a. | b. | c. | ||||||||
Select target of adjunction | Clone target of adjunction | Attach V as left daughter of higher clone |
The remaining steps of the derivation are identical to the ones that would be required to derive the English sentence We will sing a song. These steps (substitution of the subject and object arguments and subject movement) are shown in (8).
(8) | a. | b. | |||||
Substitute arguments | Move subject |
Our use of adjunction in building morphologically complex words differs in certain respects from our earlier use of it, as summarized in (9). In particular, our present use of adjunction is combined with movement, a fact that is highlighted by the term 'head movement.' Nevertheless, adjunction consists of the same formal operation in both cases: selecting a target of adjunction, cloning it, and attaching a suitable constituent as a daughter of the higher clone.5
(9) | Use of adjunction for ... | Modification | Head movement | ||
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Adjunction structure represents | Semantic relation between modifier and modifiee | Morphological relation between stem and affix | |||
Target of adjunction | Intermediate projection | Head | |||
Adjoined constituent | Maximal projection | Head | |||
Movement involved? | No | Yes | |||
As illustrated in (10)-(12), there are certain adverbs in French (in italics) that must ordinarily precede the main verb of a sentence (in boldface), rather than follow it.
(10) | a. | Elle va à peine travailler trois heures. she goes hardly work three hours 'She is going to hardly work three hours.' | |
b. | Mon ami va complètement perdre la tête. my friend goes completely lose the head 'My friend is going to completely lose his head.' | ||
c. | Je vais presque oublier mon nom. I go almost forget my name 'I'm going to almost forget my name.' | ||
(11) | a. | * | Elle va travailler à peine trois heures. |
b. | * | Mon ami va perdre complètement la tête. | |
c. | * | Je vais oublier presque mon nom. | |
(12) | a. | * | Elle va travailler trois heures à peine. |
b. | * | Mon ami va perdre la tête complètement. | |
c. | * | Je vais oublier mon nom presque. |
Adverbs don't necessarily behave syntactically like their translation
equivalents in other languages, as highlighted by the grammaticality
contrast in (i).
|
These word order facts reflect the fact that the adverbs in question must adjoin to the left of V', as shown schematically in (13), rather than to the right.
(13) |
In reading the following discussion, bear in mind that our focus is not on the distribution of adverbs per se. In particular, we are not claiming that all, or even most, adverbs left-adjoin to V' in French; in fact, there are many that right-adjoin. Rather, the idea is that we will use the particular subset of adverbs that left-adjoin to V' as a diagnostic tool to determine the position of the finite verb in French. |
Participles behave analogously to infinitives, as shown in (14)-(16).
(14) | a. | Elle avait à peine travaillé trois heures. she had hardly worked three hours 'She had hardly worked three hours.' | |
b. | Mon ami a complètement perdu la tête. my friend has completely lost the head 'My friend completely lost his head.' | ||
c. | J'avais presque oublié mon nom. I had almost forgotten my name 'I had almost forgotten my name.' | ||
(15) | a. | * | Elle avait travaillé à peine trois heures. |
b. | * | Mon ami a perdu complètement la tête. | |
c. | * | J'avais oublié presque mon nom. | |
(16) | a. | * | Elle avait travaillé trois heures à peine. |
b. | * | Mon ami a perdu la tête complètement. | |
c. | * | J'avais oublié mon nom presque. |
Moreover, the negative marker pas behaves like an adverb in French.6
(17) | a. | Nous allons (ne) pas écouter la radio. we go NE not listen the radio 'We are going not to listen to the radio.' | |||||||||||||||||
b. | * | Nous allons (ne) écouter pas la radio. |
However, when the the main verb of the sentence is finite, the adverb-verb order that is obligatory with infinitives and participles is ungrammatical.
(19) | a. | * | Elle à peine travaillera trois heures. she hardly work.fut three hours 'She will hardly work three hours.' |
b. | * | Mon ami complètement perdra la tête. my friend completely lose.fut the head 'My friend will completely lose his head.' | |
c. | * | Je presque oublierai mon nom. I almost forget.fut my name 'I will almost forget my name.' | |
d. | * | Nous (ne) pas écouterons la radio. we NE not listen.fut the radio 'We won't listen to the radio.' |
Instead, the adverb must follow the verb, although it still cannot follow the entire V'.
(20) | a. | Elle travaillera à peine trois heures. | |
b. | Mon ami perdra complètement la tête. | ||
c. | J'oublierai presque mon nom. | ||
d. | Nous (n') écouterons pas la radio. | ||
(21) | a. | * | Elle travaillera trois heures à peine. |
b. | * | Mon ami perdra la tête complètement. | |
c. | * | J'oublierai mon nom presque. | |
d. | * | Nous (n') écouterons la radio pas. |
We can make sense of these facts if we continue to assume that the adverbs under discussion adjoin to the left of V' regardless of the finiteness of the verb that they modify. This gives the correct adverb-verb order for infinitives and participles, and it also immediately explains the ungrammaticality of (21). The contrast between (19) and (20) follows straightforwardly as well if finite verbs move to I to merge with the tense morpheme, as shown in (22).
(22) | a. | b. |
Under an analysis according to which I lowers to V, it is difficult to see how the contrast between (10) and (11) on the one hand and that between (19) and (20) on the other could be handled in a principled way. It is these contrasts that lead us to conclude that V raises to I in French, rather than that I lowers to V.
As (23) and (24) show, the adverb facts for other simple tenses in French are parallel to those for the future tense.
(23) | a. | Elle travaillait à peine trois heures. she work.imperf hardly three hours 'She used to hardly work three hours.' | |
b. | Mon ami perd complètement la tête. my friend lose.pres completely the head 'My friend completely loses his head.' | ||
c. | J' oublie presque mon nom. I forget.pres almost my name 'I am almost forgetting my name.' | ||
d. | Nous (n') écoutions pas la radio. we NE listen.imperf not the radio 'We weren't listening to the radio.' | ||
(24) | a. | * | Elle à peine travaillait trois heures. |
b. | * | Mon ami complètement perd la tête. | |
c. | * | Je presque oublie mon nom. | |
d. | * | Nous (ne) pas écoutions la radio. |
On the strength of this evidence, we extend the verb raising analysis
to these other tenses as well.
Let's now turn to English and investigate simple-tense verbs, using
exactly the same diagnostic that we did in French---namely, the position of
adverbs. As in French, certain adverbs in English obligatorily precede
nonfinite verbs.
Tense lowering: I movement to V
The order of verbs and adverbs in English
(25) | a. | They will { always, never } apply. | |
b. | They have { always, never } applied. | ||
c. | They are { always, never } applying. | ||
(26) | a. | * | They will apply { always, never. } |
b. | * | They have applied { always, never. } | |
c. | * | They are applying { always, never. } |
But unlike French, these adverbs precede the main verb of a sentence even when the verb is finite.
(27) | a. | They { always, never } applied. | |
b. | * | They applied { always, never. } |
The ungrammaticality of (27b) means that the verb raising analysis that is successful for French cannot be extended to English. But recall the second option that we mentioned earlier: that tense and the verb might merge in the other direction, by means of I lowering onto V. The simplest way of implementing this idea would be to have -ed project an elementary tree, as in (28a). The past tense marker would then take a VP complement, as shown in (28b), and rightward adjunction of the tense marker to the verb would result in the structure in (28c).
(28) | a. | b. | c. | ||||||||
Elementary tree for bound morpheme | Substitute VP in (28a) | Lower tense morpheme from I to V | |||||||||
Unsatisfactory analysis |
But although such an analysis would allow us to derive regular past
tense verbs, it doesn't extend to irregular past tense forms like
brought, sang, taught, and so on. In order to
derive both regular and irregular past tense forms in a uniform way, we
will therefore assume a silent past tense morpheme as in
(29) | a. | b. |
The idea is that structures like (29b) are passed on to a morphological component of the grammar, which contains rules for how to spell out the terminal nodes of syntactic structures. According to these rules, the past tense morpheme in English is ordinarily spelled out as -ed. With irregular verbs, however, it is the entire combination of verb and tense that is spelled out in more or less idiosyncratic fashion. Thus, the regular watch + [past] is spelled out as watched, whereas the irregular sing + [past] is spelled out as sang. Although the choice between the two approaches in (29) is not completely straightforward, we prefer the second approach for the following reason. According to the first approach, the morphological component of the grammar generates verb forms bearing certain properties, or features, including tense. These verb forms then project elementary trees in the syntax that combine with other elementary trees, possibly yielding ungrammatical structures. For instance, a present tense I might take a VP complement headed by a past tense form. In order to rule out structures with such feature mismatches, it would be necessary to institute a special checking procedure, either as part of tense lowering itself or as a sort of quality control on the structures resulting from it. The second approach avoids the need for such a procedure. The idea is that terminal nodes dominated by V contain no tense features of their own, thus eliminating the possibility of feature mismatches in the syntax. When the syntactic structures are passed on to the morphological component, the tense-verb combinations are simply spelled out appropriately according to the morphological rules of the language.
Note, incidentally, that a morphological component is necessary not just in tense-lowering languages like English, but in verb-raising languages like French as well. As discussed in the previous section, the future tense in French is formed for regular verbs by combining the future tense morpheme with a verb's infinitive. In the case of irregular verbs, however, what combines with the tense morpheme is not the infinitive, but a special stem. For instance, the future tense of être 'to be' is formed with the stem ser-, yielding the future tense forms je ser-ai 'I will be', tu ser-as 'you will be', and so on. The approach in (29b) can be extended to this case straightforwardly. The idea is that in a syntactic structure like (30), the morphological rules of French spell out the terminal nodes être + -ai as serai rather than as *êtrai.
(30) |
In vernacular English, never often functions as simple sentence negation, without its literal meaning of not ever.
(31) | a. | Did you get a chance to talk to Tom at the party? | ||
b. | i. | Nope, I never did. | ||
ii. | Nope, I didn't. |
But despite their functional equivalence in contexts like (31), the negative elements not and never exhibit a striking syntactic difference: not obligatorily triggers do support, whereas never doesn't. (All forms of do in this section are to be read without emphatic stress.)
(32) | a. | * | He not applied. |
b. | He { did not, didn't } apply. | ||
(33) | a. | He never applied. | |
b. | * | He did never apply. |
In order to explain this puzzling fact, we will develop an analysis of
do support that relies on two main ideas: first, that never
and not are integrated into the structure of English sentences in
different ways, and second, that Universal Grammar allows tense lowering
(and head movement more generally) only under certain structural
conditions.7
A syntactic difference between never and not.
As shown in (34), never is intransitive and hence a maximal
projection in its own right, whereas not is transitive and hence
a head, rather than a complete phrase.
(34) | a. | b. |
There are several pieces of evidence for this distinction. The
first comes from negative inversion, a construction reminiscent
of the so am I construction
discussed in
(35) | a. | They would appreciate no present more than another novel by Wodehouse. | |
b. | No present would they appreciate more than another novel by Wodehouse. |
An important property of this construction is that the material preceding the auxiliary must be a maximal projection. Thus, in contrast to the DP no present in (35b), the head of the DP, the negative determiner no, cannot undergo negative inversion on its own.
(36) | * | No would they appreciate present more than another novel by Wodehouse. |
Bearing in mind this fact about negative inversion, consider the canonical and negative inversion sentences in (37).
(37) | a. | They will never tolerate this mess. | |
b. | Never will they tolerate this mess. |
(38) illustrates the beginning of the derivation of (37a). (38a) is the structure for the positive sentence corresponding to (37a) (where irrelevant, we omit the internal structure of maximal projections). Adjoining never as a verbal modifier then yields (38b).
(38) | a. | b. |
We discuss the structure for negative inversion sentences in
Now consider the not variant of (37a) in (39).
(39) | They will not tolerate this mess. |
Making the reasonable assumption that I can take either NegP or VP complements, we can give (39) the structure in (40).
(40) |
Given this structure, not on its own is not a maximal projection, and so not, like no but unlike never, should not be able to undergo negative inversion. As (41) shows, this expectation is confirmed.
(41) | * | Not will they tolerate this mess. |
A second piece of evidence for the status of not (and its variant n't) as a head comes from the fact that it optionally raises and adjoins to I, forming a complex head that can exhibit morphological irregularities. For instance, shall-n't and will-n't are spelled out as shan't and won't, respectively. Such irregularities are typical of what is possible when two heads combine. Although the direction of movement is different, we have seen comparable examples in connection with irregular past tense forms in English, where the combination of two heads like sing and [past] is spelled out as sang. Other well-known examples of the same phenomenon include the idiosyncratic spell-outs for preposition-determiner combinations like those in (42).
(42) | a. | French | de + le > du; de + les > des; à + le > au; à + les > aux of the.m.sg of the.pl to the.m.sg to the.pl | |
b. | German | an + dem > am; in + dem > im; zu + dem > zum; zu + der > zur to the.m.dat.sg in the.m.dat.sg to the.m.dat.sg to the.f.dat.sg | ||
c. | Italian | con + il > col; in + il > nel; su + il > sul with the.m.sg in the.m.sg on the.m.dat.sg |
A constraint on tense lowering. We turn now to the second piece of our solution to the puzzle presented by the contrast between (32) and (33), repeated here as (43) and (44).
(43) | a. | * | He not applied. |
b. | He { did not, didn't } apply. | ||
(44) | a. | He never applied. | |
b. | * | He did never apply. |
The idea is that tense lowering (though not verb raising) is subject to the locality condition in (45).
(45) | a. | When a head A lowers onto a head B, A and B must be in a local relation in the sense that no projection of a head distinct from A and B intervenes on the path of branches that connects A and B. | |
b. | An element C, C distinct from A and B, intervenes between two elements A and B iff A (or some projection of A) dominates C and C (or some projection of C) dominates B. |
It is important to understand that intervention is defined not in terms of linear precedence, but in terms of the structural predicate 'dominate.' This means that the place to look for whether the locality condition in (45) is satisfied or violated is not the string of terminal nodes beginning with A and ending with B, but the path of branches that connects A with B in the tree.
The structure for (44a) is given in (46). In this structure, tense lowering is consistent with the locality condition in (45), since adjoining never at V' results in the adverb being too low in the tree to intervene between I and V. (In other words, AdvP isn't on the green path from I to V.)
(46) |
In the structure in (47a), on the other hand, tense lowering violates the locality condition because the red projections of Neg intervene on the path between I and V, indicated in green. As a result, only the do support variant of (47a) is grammatical, which is shown in (47b). Although the intermediate and the maximal projections of Neg intervene between I and V in (47b) as well, the locality constraint in (45) is irrelevant and hence not violated because forms of do, being free morphemes, don't need to lower onto the verb.
(47) | a. | b. |
Note: In this section, +d and +t stand for the Icelandic characters eth and thorn, which represent the voiced and voiceless 'th' sounds in this, eth and thin, thorn, respectively. |
Our discussion so far has treated movement from V to I and from I to V
as two symmetrical parametric options provided by Universal Grammar.
However, the languages in which the two options have been studied in
greatest detail---the
Germanic and Romance
languages---suggest that they are ranked and that it is the V-to-I option
that is preferred, all other things being equal.8
Of course, we need to take into account that in this case, as in life
generally, all other things aren't equal. Among the Germanic and Romance
languages, we can distinguish two groups, which have to do with the
expression of subject agreement on finite verbs.9 All of these languages resemble English in
distinguishing three grammatical persons and two
grammatical numbers (singular and plural). In principle, therefore, a
language might have six
(48) | Verb paradigms in rich agreement languages | |||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Italian | Spanish | French | Icelandic | Yiddish | ||||
'I speak' | 'I speak' | 'I will speak' | 'I say' | 'I say' | ||||
1 sg | parl-o | habl-o | parler-ai | seg-i | zog | |||
2 sg | parl-i | habl-as | parler-a[s] | seg-ir | zog-st | |||
3 sg | parl-a | habl-a | parler-a | seg-ir | zog-t | |||
1 pl | parl-iamo | habl-amos | parler-on[s] | segj-um | zog-n | |||
2 pl | parl-ate | habl-áis | parler-e[z] | seg-i+d | zog-t | |||
3 pl | parl-ano | habl-an | parler-on[t] | segj-a | zog-n | |||
By contrast, the mainland Scandinavian languages (Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish) exhibit no agreement morphology at all, even with a verb like 'be', which in English preserves agreement distinctions that are not expressed elsewhere in the language. For ordinary verbs, English expresses only one distinction in the present tense and none at all in the past tense. (49) gives some paradigms for these poor agreement languages.
(49) | Verb paradigms in poor agreement languages | ||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Danish | Swedish | English | |||||||
'I throw' | 'I am' | 'I throw' | 'I am' | 'I throw' | 'I am' | ||||
1 sg | kaster | er | kaster | är | throw | am | |||
2 sg | " | " | " | " | " | are | |||
3 sg | " | " | " | " | throw-s | is | |||
1 pl | " | " | " | " | throw | are | |||
2 pl | " | " | " | " | " | " | |||
3 pl | " | " | " | " | " | " | |||
In rich agreement languages, tense merges with the verb in the same
way as we have already seen for French; that is, the verb (in boldface)
raises to I and hence precedes adverbs and negation (in italics). This
is illustrated for Icelandic and Yiddish in (50) and (51). The examples
are in the form of subordinate clauses because main clauses in Germanic
introduce a complication---briefly mentioned for Dutch and German in
(50) | a. | Icelandic | a+d Jón keypti { ekki, aldrei, raunverulega } bókina that Jón bought not never actually book.def 'that Jón { didn't buy, never bought, actually bought } the book' | |
b. | Yiddish | az zey redn ( nit, avade, mistome } mame-loshn that they speak not certainly probably mother-tongue 'that they { don't, certainly, probably } speak Yiddish' | ||
(51) | a. | * | a+d Jón { ekki, aldrei, raunverulega } keypti bókina | |
b. | * | az zey { nit, avade, mistome } redn mame-loshn |
In poor agreement languages, on the other hand, tense merges with the verb by lowering onto it, just as in English (in those contexts that don't require do support); in this case, the finite verb follows adverbs and negation. (52) and (53) illustrate this for Danish and Swedish.
(52) | a. | Danish | at Peter { ikke, ofte } drikker kaffe om morgenen that Peter not often drinks coffee in morning.def 'that Peter { doesn't drink, often drinks } coffee in the morning' | |
b. | Swedish | att Ulf { inte, faktiskt } köpte boken that Ulf not actually bought book.def 'that Ulf { didn't buy, actually bought } the book' | ||
(53) | a. | * | at Peter drikker { ikke, ofte } kaffe om morgenen | |
b. | * | att Ulf köpte { inte, faktiskt } boken |
We note in passing that the syntax of sentences containing negation is simpler in mainland Scandinavian than it is in English. Negation patterns like other adverbs, and mainland Scandinavian has no do support. This is consistent with the status of sentence negation in Scandinavian as a maximal projection, as evidenced by its ability to participate in negative inversion.10
(54) | a. | Swedish | Inte vet jag var hon bor. not know I where she lives 'I don't know where she lives.' | |
b. | Icelandic | Ekki veit ég hver hun byr. not know I where she lives |
We know of no rich agreement languages in which I lowers to V. Related to this is the fact that languages that lose rich agreement also tend to lose verb movement to I over time. Although we do not know why this correlation between richness of agreement and verb raising should hold, it suggests that children acquiring a language prefer the parametric option of verb raising over the tense lowering alternative, but only if they are able to detect sufficient cues for it in the sentences that they hear. In Germanic and Romance, the cues for the verb raising option are twofold: on the one hand, richness of agreement, and on the other, the word order that results from verb raising (finite verb > adverb). If the language being acquired has rich agreement, then the cues for the verb raising option are extremely robust. This is because virtually every sentence that the child hears contains the agreement cue, which is further reinforced by the word order cue in those sentences that contain adverbs. Under these conditions, children acquire the verb raising option without difficulty. On the other hand, given a language with poor agreement and without cues from word order, the idea is that children are simply unable to acquire the verb raising option.
What happens in a language in which agreement is being lost? In
such a language, agreement first becomes variable (that is, some
sentences contain agreement, whereas other do not) and then is lost
entirely. Thus, the cues from rich agreement become less frequent over
time, and children acquiring the language become increasingly dependent
on the word order cue. But since not every sentence contains adverbs of
the relevant sort, the cues for the verb raising option in a language
that is losing rich agreement are nowhere near as robust as in a
language with stable rich agreement. This means that although it is
possible in principle for children to acquire the verb raising option,
at least some children might acquire the tense lowering option instead
(all other things being equal). Such children would no longer produce
sentences in which the finite verb precedes the adverb. Instead, they
would produce adverb-verb orders, which are errors from the point of
view of the verb raising grammar, but the only option that the tense
lowering grammar generates. Thus, the relative frequency of the word
order cue would decrease yet further, in turn decreasing the chance of
other children acquiring the verb raising option. Such a feedback
mechanism would predict an overall tendency over time for the verb
raising option to disappear from the language. During a period of
transition, the old parametric option might continue to be used
alongside the new one---for instance, in formal usage. But for speakers
who have acquired the tense lowering option in early childhood, the verb
raising option would never be as natural as tense lowering, and so the
new parametric option would tend to supplant the old one even in formal
usage.
It is possible to track these developments in some detail in the
history of the Scandinavian languages. In Swedish, agreement begins to be
lost in the 1400s, and the earliest examples of tense lowering are from the
late part of that century. During a transition period from 1500 to 1700,
both verb raising and tense lowering are attested, sometimes even in the
same text (as in the (b) examples in (55) and (56)).
(55) | a. | Verb raising | at Gudz ord kan ey vara j honom that God's word can not be in him 'that God's word cannot be in him' | |
b. | när thet är ey stenoghth when it is not stony 'when it is not stony' | |||
(56) | a. | Tense lowering | om den dristigheten än skulle wara onågigtt uptagen if that boldness yet would be amiss taken 'if that boldness would yet be taken amiss' | |
b. | wm annar sywkdom ey krenker nokon if another illness not afflict someone 'if someone isn't afflicted with another illness' |
Finally, after 1700, the verb raising option in Swedish dies out completely.
The geographically more isolated Faroese seems to be at the very tail end of the same change. Agreement has weakened in Faroese, and speakers do not ordinarily produce verb raising sentences. However, when asked to give grammaticality judgments, many speakers accept both word orders in (57), characterizing the verb raising variant in (57b) as archaic.
(57) | a. | Tense lowering (vernacular) | Hann spur, hvi tad ikki eru fleiri tilikar samkomur. he asks why there not are more such gatherings 'He asks why there aren't more such gatherings.' | |
b. | Verb raising (archaic) | Hann spur, hvi tad eru ikki fleiri tilikar samkomur. |
Interestingly, there is at least one dialect of Swedish, the dialect
of Älvdalen, that has retained
agreement (the paradigm for kasta 'throw' is:
(58) | a. | um du for int gar ita ia firi brado if you get not done this before breakfast 'if you don't get this done before breakfast' | |
b. | fast die uar int ieme if they were not home 'if they weren't home' | ||
c. | ba fo dye at uir uildum int fy om just because that we would not follow him 'just because we wouldn't follow him' |
Note: In this section, +d and +t stand for the characters eth and thorn, which were borrowed from Scandinavian and used in Old and Middle English to represent the voiced and voiceless 'th' sounds in this, eth and thin, thorn, respectively. +g stands for the Middle English character yogh, which represents 'g' or 'y'. |
This section gives a brief review of the history of the verb movement parameter in English.11 As we will see, this part of the grammar of modern English is the culmination of one of the most complicated chapters in the entire history of the language, and it reflects several distinct but interlocking developments, which include:
(59) | Verb tense paradigms in two dialects of Middle English and two tenses of French | ||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Southern | Midlands | French 'I sing' | French 'I will sing' | ||||
1 sg | sing-e | sing-e | chant-[e] | chanter-ai | |||
2 sg | sing-est | sing-est | chant-[es] | chanter-a[s] | |||
3 sg | sing-e+t | sing-e+t | chant-[e] | chanter-a | |||
1 pl | " | sing-en | chant-on[s] | chanter-on[s] | |||
2 pl | " | " | chant-e[z] | chanter-e[z] | |||
3 pl | " | " | chant-[ent] | chanter-on[t] | |||
Given its richness of agreement, we would expect Middle English to exhibit verb raising, and so it did. As the examples in (60)-(62) show, the finite verb moved to I across both adverbs and negation, just as it does in French, Icelandic, and Yiddish.
(60) | a. | never | for God ... +geue+t neuer two tymes to-geder
(CMCLOUD,20.115) 'for God ... never gives two times together' | |
b. | and y ne12 sei+g neuer +te ry+gtful for-saken
(CMEARLPS,44.1879) 'and I have never seen the righteous forsaken' | |||
c. | and Engist ... ne knew neuer bifore +tat Lande.
(CMBRUT3,55.1621-1622) 'and Engist ... never knew that land before.' | |||
d. | he thought he sawe never so grete a knyght
(CMMALORY,180.2433) 'he thought he had never seen so great a knight' | |||
e. | for +tey synneden neuere.
(CMWYCSER,234.204) 'for they never sinned.' | |||
(61) | a. | Other adverbs | he weneth alwey that he may do thyng that he may nat do.
(CMCTMELI,222.C1.193) 'he always thinks that he can do things that he can't do' | |
b. | for +te Britons destroiede alwai +te cristen peple
+tat seynt Austyne hade baptisede
(CMBRUT3,98.2954) 'for the Britons always killed the Christians that St. Austin had baptized' | |||
c. | +te +gong man resortyd alwey to +te preste
(CMKEMPE,57.1270) 'the young man always resorted to the priest' | |||
(62) | a. | not | This emperour Claudius was so obliuiows +tat, sone aftir he had killid
his wyf, he asked why sche cam not to soper.
(CMCAPCHR,49.535) 'This emperor Claudius was so oblivious that, soon after he had killed his wife, he asked why she didn't come to supper.' | |
b. | He mad eke a precept +tat no Jew into Jerusalem schuld entre,
but Cristen men he forbade not +te entre.
(CMCAPCHR,52.605-606) 'He also made a law that no Jew should enter into Jerusalem, but he did not forbid Christians from entering.' | |||
c. | Ich ne hidde nou+gt +ty mercy
(CMEARLPS,49.2106) 'I did not hide thy mercy' | |||
d. | Bott I sawe noght synne. (CMJULNOR,60.289) 'But I did not see sin.' | |||
e. | but he wythdrowe not hir temptacyon (CMKEMPE,16.321) 'but he did not withdraw her temptation' | |||
f. | but Balyn dyed not tyl the mydnyghte after.
(CMMALORY,69.2360) 'but Balyn didn't die till the midnight after.' |
In the course of Middle English, several syntactic developments took
place that culminated in the complex grammar of modern English with respect
to the verb movement parameter. First, by 1500, the beginning of Early
Modern English, the agreement system of Middle English was simplified, and
as we would expect given what we know of the history of Scandinavian, verb
raising was lost as well. For instance, between 1475 and 1525, the
frequency of verb raising dropped from roughly 65% to 10%. In the case of
adverbs, the loss of verb raising simply led to the modern word order
adverb > finite verb, as is evident from the translations for (58)-(60).
But the effects of the loss of verb raising in the case of negation were
quite a bit more complicated and involved two further changes: a change in
the status of not and the emergence of do support. We
discuss these changes in turn.
Negative inversion.
There is good evidence that in early Middle English not was an
ordinary adverb on a par with never and French pas. Like
never and negative phrases throughout the history of English, it
could undergo negative inversion.
A change in the status of not
(63) | a. | & nohht ne stannt itt stille (CMORM,I,125.1080) and not NE stood it still 'and it didn't stand still' | |
b. | Acc nohht ne mihht itt oppnenn hemm +Te +gate off heoffness blisse (CMORM,I,142.1172) and not NE might it open them the gate of heaven's bliss 'and it could not open the gate of heaven's bliss for them' |
In the absence of further developments, we would therefore expect the loss of verb raising in ordinary sentences to result in a word order change from verb-not to not-verb, as happened in mainland Scandinavian. However, in contrast to negation in Scandinavian, not in the course of Middle English went from being an ordinary adverb to being a head (recall the discussion of its status as a head in connection with our discussion of do support). As a result, the modern English counterparts of (63) are ungrammatical (cf. (41)).
(64) | a. | * | Not did it stand still. |
b. | * | Not could it open the gates of heaven's bliss for them. |
Adjunction to I'. There is a further piece of evidence that not changed from a phrase to a head in the course of Middle English. In early Middle English, not could adjoin not just to V', but also to I'.
(65) | a. | +da +tinges +de hie naht ne scolden +giuen. (CMVICES1,139.1728) the things that they not NE should give 'the things that they shouldn't give' | |
b. | +Tatt Jesuss nohht ne wollde Ben borenn nowwhar i +te land (CMORM,I,122.1053) that Jesus not NE wanted be born nowhere in the land 'that Jesus did not want to be born anywhere in the land' |
In this respect, not resembled never and other adverbs, which have preserved this ability to this day, as shown in (66).13
(66) | a. | Middle English | he swore +tat Saxones neuer shulde haue pees ne reste (CMBRUT3,69.2090) | |
'he swore that the Saxons never should have peace or rest' | ||||
b. | Modern English | He { always, probably, never } will admit his shortcomings. |
However, in contrast to the other adverbs, not lost the ability to adjoin to I' in the course of Middle English, with the result that the counterparts of (65) are ungrammatical in Modern English.
(67) | a. | * | the things that he not should give |
b. | * | that Jesus not would be born anywhere in the land |
The reanalysis of not from an ordinary adverb to a head was essentially complete by 1400,14 and shortly thereafter, the first examples of the contracted form n't are attested, as we might expect. Agreement began to weaken around this time. What consequences did have this for children acquiring sentences containing not in early Middle English? On the one hand, the rich agreement cues for verb raising were weakening, but on the other hand, tense lowering was impossible in sentences containing not given that not was a head. In other words, in the absence of any other developments, the loss of verb raising in sentences containing not would have resulted in a situation in which ordinary negative sentences could not be generated!
One can imagine a number of different resolutions to such an impasse, each of them representing a particular possible accident of history. For instance, the negative head not might have been dropped from the language, and the adverb never might have taken over its function. What actually happened in the history of English, however, was something that depended on an unrelated development in the language that had taken place in the 1200s: the development of the verb do into an auxiliary element.
Like many languages, Middle English had a construction involving a causative verb and a lower verb, in which the lower verb's agent could be left unexpressed. We first illustrate this construction, which has since been lost from English, for French and German in (68). The causative verb is in boldface, and the lower verb is in italics.
(68) | a. | French | Edouard a fait assembler une grande armée. Edward has made assemble a great army 'Edward had a great army assembled.'literally: 'Edward had someone (understood) assemble a great army' | |
b. | German | Eduard ließ ein großes Heer versammeln. Edward let a great army assemble 'Edward had a great army assembled.' |
In Middle English, two different causative verbs were used in this construction depending on the dialect. The East Midlands dialect use do, as illustrated in (69), whereas the West Midlands dialect used make. In other words, the West Midlands equivalent of (69a) would have been (using modern spelling) Edward made assemble a great host.
(69) | a. | Middle English (East Midlands) | Edwarde dede assemble a grete hoste
(CMBRUT3,112.3380_ID) 'Edward had a great army assembled' | |
b. | This Constantin ded clepe a gret councel at Constantinople
(CMCAPCHR,81.1484) 'This Constantine had a great council called at Constantinople' literally: 'This Constantine had someone (understood) call a great council at Constantinople' | |||
c. | He ded make fer+tingis and halfpenies, whech were not
used before (CMCAPCHR,128.2962) 'He had farthings and halfpennies made, which weren't used before' literally: 'He had someone (understood) make farthings and halfpennies' |
Now in many discourse contexts, causative sentences like He had a great army assembled are used more or less interchangeably with simple sentences like He assembled a great army. As a result, in situations of dialect contact, it was possible for West Midlands speakers (those with causative make) to misinterpret sentences with causative do from the East Midlands dialect as just another way of saying a simple sentence. Based on this misinterpretation, they might then themselves have begun to use do, but as an auxiliary verb bleached of its causative content rather than as a causative verb (for which they would have continued to use their own make). Since the border between the East and West Midlands dialects runs diagonally through England, the chances of dialect contact and of the reinterpretation and adoption of do as an auxiliary verb were good. In any event, it is West Midlands speakers who first used do as an auxiliary verb. Once the auxiliary use was established, it could then have spread to other dialects, especially in big cities like London, where people came from many different dialect backgrounds and where dialect distinctions were leveled as a result.
What is important from a syntactic point of view is that auxiliary
do occurred rarely before 1400. However, when agreement weakened
and verb raising began to be lost, auxiliary do was increasingly
pressed into service since it allowed negative sentences to be generated by
the verb lowering grammar.
Auxiliary do must either have entered the language as a modal
(that is, a member of the syntactic category I), or have been reanalyzed as
one very early on, since if it had been a V, it would have had to combine
with tense and thus would have run afoul of exactly the locality constraint
that it actually helped to circumvent. In any event, auxiliary do
was one of a growing number of modals in Middle English that developed out
of an earlier class of auxiliary verbs. Historically, these so-called
premodals belonged to a special class of verbs with morphological
peculiarities, and some of them were already syntactically special from the
very beginning of Middle English. For instance, the forerunners of
must and shall never occur as nonfinite forms in Middle
English. Children acquiring these two premodals would therefore have had
no evidence that they moved from V to I as opposed to belonging to the
category I, and so they might already have been modals in early Middle
English.
Consider now the effect of the loss of verb raising on the status of
any premodals that were still members of the syntactic category V. In
particular, consider a structure like (70) (we assume that the premodals,
just like modals, took VP complements).
The emergence of modals
(70) |
In the outgoing verb raising grammar, the finite modal can combine with tense even in the presence of negation because verb raising is not subject to the locality constraint on tense lowering. For examples like (71), this yields a schematic derivation as in (72).
(71) | sho wil noht do it (CMBENRUL,31.1035) 'she will not do it' |
(72) | a. | b. | c. |
The reason that we represent the verb as raising first to Neg and then I, rather than as skipping Neg and raising directly to I, is because Middle English allows questions like (73), where the negated verb inverts as a constituent with the subject.
(73) | Wil noht sho do it? |
In the incoming tense lowering grammar, structures containing not are ordinarily rescued by do support. But in contrast to sentences containing ordinary verbs, do support in a structure like (72) might plausibly have been ruled out on the grounds that auxiliary do inherited a constraint from causative do that is given in (74).
(74) | The complement of a causative construction cannot be an auxiliary element (a premodal, modal, or auxiliary verb like have or be). |
Notice that the constraint on causative verbs in (74) is not specific to Middle English; its effects in modern English and German are illustrated in (75) and (76). The causative verb is in italics, and auxiliary elements are in boldface.
(75) | a. | No auxiliary | The coach had the players run. | |
b. | Auxiliary | * | The coach had the players be running. | |
c. | * | The coach had the players have run. | ||
(76) | a. | No auxiliary | Der Trainer ließ die Spieler laufen. the coach had the players run. 'The coach had the players run.' | |
b. | Auxiliary | * | Der Trainer ließ die Spieler am Laufen sein. the coach had the players at.the running be 'The coach had the players be running.' | |
c. | * | Der Trainer ließ die Spieler gelaufen sein. the coach had the players run.part be 'The coach had the players have (lit. be) run.' | ||
d. | * | Der Trainer ließ die Spieler laufen { können, wollen. } the coach had the players run be.able want 'The coach had the players { be able, want } to run.' |
Again, various ways out of this impasse are conceivable. For instance, the constraint in (74) might have been relaxed for auxiliary do. What actually happened, however, was that any remaining premodals were reanalyzed as modals along the lines of must, shall, and auxiliary do. The schematic structure for (72) after the reanalysis is shown in (75).
(75) |
After this reanalysis, sentences like (76), with nonfinite forms of premodals like cunnen and mowen, both meaning 'be able to', ceased to be possible in English (at least in the standard language).
(76) | a. | he schuld cun best rede +te booke (CMKEMPE,4.52) 'He should be able to read the book best' | |
b. | I shal not conne wel goo thyder (CMREYNAR,14.261) 'I won't be able to go there easily' | ||
c. | and hij shul nou+gt mow stonde (CMEARLPS,19.764) 'and he shall not be able to stand' | ||
d. | Noo man shall mow resyst thy power in all thy lyfe.
(CMFITZJA,A3R.28) 'No man shall be able to resist your power in all your life.' |
(77) | a. | Auxiliary verb | Perfect | I have read that chapter. |
b. | Progressive | I am reading that chapter. | ||
c. | Passive | That material is treated in the next chapter. | ||
(78) | a. | Main verb: | I have that book. | |
b. | This chapter is difficult. |
We begin by considering these verbs as auxiliaries in structures like (79) (we assume that the elementary trees for auxiliary verbs don't have specifiers, but the assumption isn't crucial in what follows).
(79) |
As just discussed in connection with modals, tense lowering is impossible in a structure like (79) because not intervenes between tense and the verb, nor can the structure be rescued by auxiliary do given the constraint suggested in (74). This is exactly the situation in which the premodals were reanalyzed as instances of I. In the case of the premodals, this reanalysis was possible because hardly any of them ever occurred as nonfinite forms. But an analogous reanalysis in the case of auxiliary verbs was precluded because nonfinite auxiliary have and be occurred very often in Middle English. Some examples are given in (80) and (81); again, the auxiliary verbs are in boldface and the main verbs are underlined. In addition, the element in I (modal or premodal), which guarantees the nonfiniteness of the auxiliary verb, is in italics.
(80) | a. | y shulde haue axede of here no more (CMBRUT3,19.563) 'I should have asked no more of her' | |
b. | and after he wolde haue conquerede al Scotland and Walys
(CMBRUT3,23.687) 'and afterwards he would have conquered all Scotland and Wales' | ||
c. | And Gutlagh wolde haue went into his countree
(CMBRUT3,25.729) 'And Gutlagh would have gone into his country' | ||
(81) | a. | Bot euensang sal be saide wid foure salmes
(CMBENRUL,18.626) 'But evensong shall be said with four psalms' | |
b. | the wordes of the phisiciens sholde been understonden
in this wise (CMCTMELI,226.C2.365) 'the words of the physicians should be understood in this way' | ||
c. | A sone, Josias bi name, schal be born to the hous of Dauith
(CMPURVEY,I,13.518) 'A sone, Josias by name, shall be born to the house of David' |
Again, of course, various ways of resolving this impasse are conceivable. For instance, the constraint preventing do from occurring with auxiliary elements might have been relaxed. However, what actually happened in the history of English is that children acquired the verb raising option with precisely these two lexical items. As a result, the order of auxiliary have and be with respect to negation in modern English parallels that in French.
English | French | |||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
(82) | a. | Verb raising | We have not read the book. | Nous (ne) avons pas lu le livre. we NE have not read the book | ||
b. | We are not invited. | Nous (ne) sommes pas invités. we NE are not invited | ||||
(83) | a. | No verb raising | * | We (do) not have read the book. | * | Nous (ne) pas avons lu le livre. |
b. | * | We (do) not be invited. | * | Nous (ne) pas sommes invités. |
(84) schematically illustrates the derivation of the English examples. (84a) is identical to (79), and as in the analogous structure for modals in (70), the verb raises to I via Neg.
(84) | a. | b. | c. |
Let us now turn to the main verb uses of have and be. We begin with have. Because of the homonymy of main verb have and auxiliary have, main verb have for a time behaved syntactically like auxiliary have, raising from V to I and otherwise exhibiting the syntactic behavior of a modal, as illustrated in (85).
(85) | a. | Negation without do support | He hasn't any money; you haven't any wool. | |
b. | Question formation without do support | Has he any money; have you any wool? |
In present-day usage, however, the pattern in (85) has become archaic in American English and is on the wane even in British English. It has been replaced by the pattern in (86), where main verb have exhibits the syntax of an ordinary verb, not that of a modal.15, 16
(86) | a. | Negation with do support | He doesn't have any money; you don't have any wool. | |
b. | Question formation with do support | Does he have any money; do you have any wool? |
Finally, we consider main verb be, which exhibits richer agreement than any other verb in English. Strikingly, it is also the only main verb in English that continues to raise to I.
(87) | a. | No do support | This chapter isn't difficult. | |
b. | Is this chapter difficult? | |||
(88) | a. | Do support | * | This chapter doesn't be difficult. |
b. | * | Does this chapter be difficult? |
1. In what follows, we focus on the past tense since the present tense is not overtly marked at all in English. The -s of the third person singular expresses subject agreement rather than present tense (Kayne 1989).
2. Yiddish and the southern German dialects from which it developed are exceptions in this regard. In these languages, the synthetic simple past has been replaced by the analytic present perfect (Middle High German ich machte 'I made' > Yiddish ikh hob gemakht, literally 'I have made').
3.
A very similar shift occurred in English from 'they have to V' to 'they
must V'. Such semantic shifts, with concomitant changes in
morphological status (see
4. Such reanalysis might be the source of much, if not all, inflectional morphology. In many cases, especially in languages that are not written, the sources of the inflections would be obscured by further linguistic changes, primarily phonological reduction. Consider, for instance, the development of the future tense in Tok Pisin, an English-based contact language that originated in the 1800s and that has become the national language of Papua New Guinea. In current Tok Pisin, particularly among speakers whose first language it is, the future marker is the bound morpheme b. We are fortunate to have written records of Tok Pisin from the late 1800's, and so we happen to know that this morpheme is the reflex of the adverbial phrase by and by, which the earliest speakers of Tok Pisin frequently used to indicate future tense.
5. Historically, the negative marker in French was ne, and pas, literally 'step', was an intensifier without negative force of its own. Modern English has comparable intensifiers, as in I don't want to do it { one bit, at all. } In the course of the history of French, ne, being phonologically weak, was often elided in speech, and pas was reanalyzed as carrying negative force. In modern French, ne is characteristic of the formal language, and in some spoken varieties, such as Montreal French, ne hardly ever occurs. In the present discussion, we disregard ne, treating it as an optional, semantically meaningless particle.
6. Do support raises some of the thorniest problems in English syntax, and no completely satisfactory analysis of it exists as yet. So although our analysis is adequate to explain the contrast between (32) and (33), it does not address many other puzzling facts that have been discovered in connection with do support.
7. The discussion in this section is based on data and ideas in Barnes 1992, Falk 1993, Holmberg and Platzack 1995, Platzack 1988, Roberts 1993, and Vikner 1995.
8. In what follows, we do not consider verb-final languages like German or Dutch. Evidence for verb movement to I in these languages would have to come from adverbs that right-adjoin to V', with the finite verb then moving rightward across the adverb. However, for reasons that are not yet understood, right-adjunction to V' does not seem to possible in verb-final languages.
9. For some reason, negation cannot participate in negative inversion in Danish, perhaps because it cannot bear prosodic stress.
10. The discussion in this section is based on data and ideas in Frisch 1997, Kroch 1989, Roberts 1993, Rohrbacher 1993, and the Penn-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Middle English (Kroch and Taylor 2000).
11.
Early Middle English had a negative particle ne, etymologically
cognate with French ne and syntactically comparable to it. See
12. The possibility of adjoining adverbs to I' complicates the assignment of structures to sentences with adverb-verb word order once verb raising begins to be lost. This is because they could be instances of the old verb raising grammar, with the adverb adjoined at I', or instances of the new verb lowering grammar, with the adverb adjoined at either I' or V'. In any particular sentence, it isn't possible to tell which is the right structure. But in a corpus of sentences, it is possible to correct for the complication introduced by the possibility of adjunction to I', because the frequency of adjunction to I' has remained extremely stable from Early Middle English until today (about 16% with never). This means that frequencies of adverb-verb order appreciably over 16% in a corpus can reliably be attributed to the verb lowering grammar.
13. Not continued to be available as an adverb with a low frequency into the 1600s. The evidence for this is the existence, though rare, of negative sentences in Early Modern English of the modern mainland Scandinavian type, with not preceding a finite verb, as in (i).
(i) | a. | they deafe mens' eares, but not edify. | |
b. | he that filches from me my good name robs me of that which not enriches him. | ||
c. | Safe on this ground we not fear today to tempt your laughter by our rustic play. |
These sentences are linguistic hybrids in the sense that they contain the adverbial not characteristic of early Middle English, but instantiate the tense lowering parameter characteristic of modern English. As the use of adverbial not finally dies out completely in the 1600s, so do sentences of the type in (i).
14. The syntactic divergence between auxiliary and main verb have is exactly comparable to that between auxiliary and main verb do.
15. The replacement of (85) by (86) is complicated by the existence in both American and British English of the have got pattern illustrated in (i), where have serves as an auxiliary verb rather than as the main verb. Sutherland 2000 studies the competition among all three variants (have with and without do support and have got) in both dialects of English.
(i) | a. | He hasn't got any money; you haven't got any wool. | |
b. | Has he got any money; have you got any wool? |
The material in parentheses in the translations, which is in the
original, is added for clarity, but it isn't included in the grammar
tool.
Assume that 'always' and 'never' have adjoined in the same direction throughout the history of English. A spelling note: u and v were used interchangeably in Middle English. |
(1) | a. | they synneden neuer they sinned never 'They never sinned.' | |
b. | the Britons destroieden alwey the cristen peple the Britons destroyed always the Christian people 'the Britons always killed the Christians (that St. Austin had baptized)' | ||
c. | the yong man resortyd alwey to the preste the young man resorted always to the priest 'the young man always resorted to the priest' | ||
d. | he weneth alwey that he may do thyng he thinks always that he can do things 'He always thinks that he can do things (that he can't do). | ||
e. | God geueth neuer two tymes to-geder God gives never two times together 'God (the giver of time) never gives two times together (but each one after the other).' |
(1) | a. | I will require that he { come, *comes, *came. } | |
b. | I required that he { come, *comes, *came. } |
The structure for the grammatical alternative in (1a) is given in (2).
(2) |
Is the subjunctive element that heads these complement clauses a silent tense element or a silent modal (corresponding roughly to should)? Explain. Take into account the facts in (1) and (3), the results of negating the complement clauses in (1) and (3), and any other facts that you find relevant.
(3) | a. | I will say that he { *drive, drives, drove } a Mazda. | |
b. | I said that he { *drive, drives, drove } a Mazda. |
A. Using the grammar tool in not only, according to
which not is a head that takes any syntactic category as its
complement, build two structures for (1) that are both consistent with the
locality condition on tense lowering discussed in
(1) | She not only wrote the letter (but she sent it). |
B. Now build a structure for (2).
(2) | She didn't only write the letter (but she sent it). (no stress on did) |
Be sure your structures for (1) and (2) differ topologically (have a different shape apart from the terminal nodes) since otherwise the contrast in (3) is mysterious.
(3) | a. | * | She not wrote the letter. |
b. | She didn't write the letter. (no stress on did) |
African American English (AAE) distinguishes two instances of be: so-called habitual be, the focus of this exercise, and ordinary be. Both types of be can be used as main verbs or auxiliaries. We pose the exercise after describing the semantic and morphological differences between the two types of be. The data are based on Green 1998.
Habitual be has no counterpart in standard English. It is used to describe situations that are generally true, as illustrated in (1).
(1) | a. | Main verb | The coffee be nasty at that joint. 'The coffee is always/usually bad at that place.' | |
b. | Auxiliary | He be sleeping when they call. 'He is always/usually sleeping/asleep when they call.' |
Ordinary be resembles standard English be in its use.
Unlike be in standard English, ordinary be can be silent in the present tense in AAE, as indicated by the parentheses in (2). In this respect, AAE resembles languages like Hebrew and Russian. Habitual be cannot be silent. We mention these facts for completeness only. For the purposes of the exercise, disregard the silent option. |
(2) | a. | Main verb | This coffee (is) nasty. 'This coffee is bad.' (as a one-time occurrence) | |
b. | Auxiliary | The baby (is) sleeping. 'The baby is sleeping.' (now) |
The two types of be also differ morphologically, as shown in (3).
(3) | Ordinary be | Habitual be | |||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
I | am | be | |||||||
you | is | " | |||||||
he/she/it | " | " | |||||||
we | " | " | |||||||
y'all | " | " | |||||||
they | " | " | |||||||
Given the facts in (1)-(3) and the further fact in (4), take a stab at what the emphatic, negated, and interrogative versions of (1) are. Assume that the grammars of AAE and standard English are identical unless you are forced to assume the contrary by the facts in (1)-(4).
(4) | Assume that AAE, unlike standard English, doesn't have person agreement in the present. In other words, AAE has I, he played; I, he play; I, he did; I, he do. |
For the purposes of this exercise, assume the judgments given, even if they are not your own. |
(1) | A: | You're lying; you didn't go to the movies. | ||
(2) | a. | B: | I did so go to the movies. | |
b. | B: | * | I so went to the movies. |
B. Does the so in (2) have the same syntactic properties as the so in (3)? Explain briefly.
(3) | So did I. |
(1) | a. | I might can come to your party | |
b. | I might could come to your party |
Propose a syntactic analysis of this construction.