Basic English Syntax with Exercises

bound morpheme

5.2.3.2 Light verbs and ergatives

The difference between English and Hungarian, however, is that the causative element is not phonologically empty in Hungarian. The ít morpheme, however, is a bound morpheme, which means that it must attach to some appropriate stem, i.e. a verb, and this is the trigger for the movement:

5.2.3.2 Light verbs and ergatives

Thus the main verb stem moves to the causative light verb morpheme in order to bind it. The product of the movement would obviously have to undergo further morphological processes in order to show the appropriate tense and agreement forms, but this is unimportant for the point being made here. Suppose English works in exactly the same way as this. The English causative light verb is a bound morpheme, though a phonologically null one, and differs only in this way from the non-null causative make. Thus it must be attached to the main verb and this happens by the main verb moving to adjoin to it. This would then give us an independent motivation for the movement of the verb.

5.2.4 Transitive verbs

Again, if this were the final analysis of the construction we would derive the wrong order with the verb following its object. Once again, however, we might assume that the main verb raises to the light verb, presumably because of its bound morpheme status:

5.2.4.1 Evidence from passives

In all these examples however, the passive verb has the passive morpheme. We can incorporate this into our analysis of the passive making use of an idea presented above, that certain bound morphemes can be analysed as light verbs. Suppose we assume that the passive morpheme is a light verb which replaces the agentive light verb of the active. As the passive light verb does not assign a Θ-role to its subject, it will not be able to assign a Case to the theme in the specifier of the VP and hence this argument will have to move to subject position. Moreover, the bound morpheme status of the passive light verb will force the main verb to move in order to support it:

5.2.4.4 Multiple light verbs

To get the right word order we will have to assume that the verb moves to the highest light verb and in fact, the verb will have to move to them both, one after the other, if abstract light verbs are bound morphemes:

5.2.6 Multiple complement verbs

The verb movement is as we have seen before. As both light verbs are bound morphemes, both will need supporting and so the verb will move from one to the other forming a complex head adjunction structure in the top head position. As far as Case relationships are concerned, the subject DP is in a Caseless position and hence will move to the clause subject position to get nominative Case. The indirect object gets accusative from the upper light verb in the position it moves to and the direct object gets Case from the lower light verb without moving. The word order is as predicted with the verb preceding both the objects and the indirect object moved in front of the direct object.

5.2.9 Summary

To summarise this fairly long discussion of the structure of the VP, we can conclude that strict adherence to the UTAH and the assumption that there is isomorphism between event structure and VP structure leads us to sometime quite surprising but enlightening analyses of the central part of the clause. The VP itself seems a hive of activity, with verbs and arguments moving about from position to position which obviously complicates its description. However, the reasons for the movements themselves are fairly straightforward. The verb moves to support the abstract light verbs which have a bound morpheme status, DP arguments move to Case positions and clausal arguments move away from Case positions. Once such things are understood, some rather mysterious properties of VPs become demystified. Phenomena such as passivisation, double object alternation, the there construction, cognate objects and phrasal verb constructions are given a fairly satisfying analysis which we can take as encouraging for this approach.

6.2.1 Inserting auxiliaries into I

In the previous chapter, we introduced the idea that dummy auxiliaries are inserted into a structure when the verb is unable to support a bound morpheme. Consider what happens with regard to a bound inflectional element such as the present tense morpheme s:

6.2.1 Inserting auxiliaries into I

In both of these examples, the verb moves from the V position to support the aspectual morphemes. As a consequence of English stems being unable to support more than one overt morpheme, the verb cannot move further. As the inflection is a bound morpheme it needs supporting and in this case the auxiliaries are inserted directly into the inflectional slot. Note that which auxiliary is used depends on the aspectual element heading the vP complement of the inflectional element. A perfective aspectual morpheme determines the supporting auxiliary to be have while the progressive morpheme determines the supporting auxiliary to be be. With a slightly more complex example, we see that this is a very general process:

6.2.2 Do-insertion

Because of its behaviour, the Finnish negative element is often called the negative auxiliary or even a negative verb. Moreover, in other languages the negative element surfaces as a bound morpheme on the verb, a situation very similar to the analysis we have given the aspectual markers in English. This is exemplified by the following Choctaw and Japanese sentences:

6.2.2 Do-insertion

Besides the bound morpheme status of the negative, these languages differ from English in that verbal stems are allowed to support more than one bound morpheme and hence there is agglutination: complex words being formed from a series of inflectional morphemes. The point is that in these languages the negative element behaves like we have seen certain English light verbs do and hence they offer support for the suggestion that the negative can be analysed as a light verb.

6.2.3 Tense and Agreement

Before trying to solve these puzzles, one more mystery should be introduced. Our assumptions have been that auxiliaries are inserted into a structure to support bound morphemes when the verb is unable for one reason or another to do so. Obviously a free morpheme does not need supporting either by the verb or an auxiliary. This would predict that when the inflection appears as a free morpheme, i.e. a tense or the infinitival marker, there will be no need for an inserted auxiliary to accompany an aspectual morpheme. But this prediction seems to be false:

6.2.3 Tense and Agreement

When there is a bound inflectional element, i.e. a tense morpheme, the null morpheme is not present:

6.2.4 Movement to tense and I

Having separated tense and agreement (=inflection), let us consider their properties separately. Tense is obviously a bound morpheme triggering movement of the verb or insertion of an auxiliary when the verb is unable to move. But what about the null agreement morpheme, is this a bound morpheme or not? If it is, it will need supporting and we would expect verbs and auxiliaries to appear as high as the I node as we do not want to claim that the inflection lowers onto the tense. On the other hand, agreement might be like the modals and be a free morpheme, in which case we would expect nothing to move to I. The data are complex and often depend on other assumptions as to how to interpret them. Basically there appears to be a difference in how verbs and auxiliaries behave. Auxiliaries appear to be able to achieve a higher position than the main verb, indicating that while the verb can move to tense it cannot move to I, whereas auxiliaries can be in I.

6.2.4 Movement to tense and I

This supports the assumption that the inflection is a bound morpheme that needs supporting by a verbal element. With main verbs, however, we find that the tensed verb appears below the adverb and the verb cannot support tense in the presence of negation:

7.3.4 The interaction between wh-movement and inversion

The most important issue concerning I-to-C movement is why it happens. There are two main views on this. One is that I-to-C movement happens because there is a bound C morpheme in interrogative clauses and this triggers the movement of the auxiliary to support it in the same way that inflections trigger verbs and auxiliaries to move. The other view is that the movement happens in precisely the cases when there is nothing in C and there is a requirement that there must be. The first is perhaps the most intuitively obvious, but it faces a number of problems which make the other approach more attractive. Let us consider each proposal separately.

7.3.4 The interaction between wh-movement and inversion

The simple assumption that this interrogative complementiser is a bound morpheme in English is enough to justify the movement of the inflectional element to support it:

7.3.4 The interaction between wh-movement and inversion

Again, as this particle is a bound morpheme, it will trigger movement to support it:

7.3.4 The interaction between wh-movement and inversion

However, we have also claimed that main clauses are CPs and so have complementisers introducing them. Therefore there seems to be a distinction between main clause and embedded clause complementisers. If this is so, then we might claim that the main clause interrogative complementiser differs from the embedded interrogative clause complementiser in that the former is a bound morpheme while the latter is not:

7.3.4 The interaction between wh-movement and inversion

If we assume that Q, like if, is not a bound morpheme, then there will be no reason for inversion. However, in a main clause there can be no complementiser and hence Q like all other complementisers will be prevented from appearing. An interrogative CP still needs to be interpreted as interrogative however and hence it will need its head to have the [+wh] feature. We have seen how, when a wh-element moves to spec CP, it agrees with the head. If we make the reasonable assumption that nothing can agree with an empty head position, this necessitates something being in the head position of an interrogative clause. Given that complementisers are systematically excluded from this position, the only option is to move the nearest head into the C position and this will be the auxiliary in I:

8.2.1 Raising

The verb will move from its original position to support some inflection, depending on what is present. If there are aspectual morphemes, the lowest will be supported by the verb, if not the verb will move to either the (null) tense, if there is a modal, or all the way to the I position if there is a bound agreement morpheme as well:

8.2.1 Raising

Here, the verb first moves to the tense position, and then into the I to support the bound tense and agreement morphemes. The subject in its D-structure position is Caseless, so it moves into the vacant specifier of the IP where it is assigned nominative Case.