The Syntax Workbook. Andrew Carnie
1 stands for “first person” (the speaker), 2 stands for “second person” (the listener), 3 stands for “third person” (someone else). Masculine, feminine, and neuter are genders. We abbreviate these as m, f, n respectively. Singular and plural are numbers, which are abbreviated s and p.
PART 1: Assume that person is captured with the features [±participant] (which refers to those that are actually participants in the conversation) and [±speaker]. Give the features that define each of the persons. Then give the features for each of the pronouns in the table above.
PART 2: Now let’s consider the 3rd person forms. Let’s assume that [±feminine] defines the distinction between he and she. What about it? The strange thing about it is that it has an additional restriction upon it: It cannot be used to refer to people. It seems to only be ok when referring to things.
e) The book is on the couch. Could you bring it to me?
c) The girl is on the couch. *Could you bring it to me?
One hypothesis about this is that it isn’t defined with a feature like [neuter] but instead with a feature [±animate]. Give the features for he/she/it. Ask yourself if the pronoun it is even specified for the feature [±feminine] (i.e. does it have a value for this feature or is the feature simply absent).
Part 3: Now let’s think about the features for the plural usage of they. Does they have a value for [±feminine]? What about [±animate]? Why or why not?
Part 4: Consider singular uses of they, used either when you don’t know the gender of the person or when the person being referred to prefers non-binary pronouns. Does this pronoun have a value for [±feminine]? What about [±animate]? Why or why not?
Part 5: When talking about a non-binary person or other people who use they as their preferred pronoun, it’s considered to be very rude to refer to them with it. Instead using they is really the only non-rude option. Referring to the grammatical features you have described in parts 4, 5, and 6 explain why using it is inappropriate for a non-binary person and they is a better choice.
WBE14. SUBCATEGORIES OF VERBS
[Data Analysis; Intermediate]
Try to determine what subcategory the following verbs belong to. Use the categories in
(32) in the main textbook.
1 sleep
2 rub
3 demand
ANSWERS
WBE1. LUMMI
Both (b) and (c) are also verbs. We can tell this by virtue of the fact that they bear the same basic inflection as the verb. This tells us that semantic definitions aren’t valid, because presumably the words that mean the same thing in English are nouns and adjectives respectively.
WBE2. IRISH MORPHOLOGY
Modern Irish -eoir/-óir attaches to verbs and changes them into nouns. This suffix is a distributional marker of the noun part of speech
WBE3. ABAZA
The words čʷəməɤ, mgʷadəw, and ǰʲmaxčʲa are all verbs. They appear with the subject agreement marker d- and the present tense suffix -b. They also appear in the same position in the sentence: at the end of the work.
WBE4. EDO
The word né!né can appear before nouns, but not adjectives.
WBE5. IDENTIFYING PARTS OF SPEECH
Nouns: The following are pronouns, which are a kind of noun: you(’ll), my, I, she, her, his, he, him, they. Clear nouns are feet, skirt, ankles, floor, tiptoe, fawn, Sidney Trove, creature, muscles, form, school, work, feats, strength, equal, trickery, music, everything, beauty, delight, life, regret, ignorance. Play and dancing are also nouns in this sentence even though they express actions.
Verbs: For the moment, I’ll leave auxiliary verbs like will or had out of the list. We’ll return to these later. The following are clear verbs: watch, see, do, said, lifting, glided, was, developed, met, (were,) loved, increased, filled.
Adjectives: dainty, graceful, lithe, deep. Untrained is also an adjective, but this may not be obvious from the criteria listed in the main textbook.
Adverbs: lightly. How is also an adverb, but this may not be obvious from the criteria listed in the main textbook.
WBE6. FUNCTIONAL PARTS OF SPEECH
if, (’ll for will), do, above, across, and, on, as, a, was, not, the, in, the, of, or, at, which, had, no, were, all, that, but, with.
Yes, they are all closed class.
WBE7. PREPOSITIONS
1 to
2 from
3 under
4 over
5 without
6 by
7 above
8 before
9 after
10 through
11 near
12 off
13 for
14 into
15 during
16 across
17 since
18 until
19 at
WBE8. DETERMINERS
Articles: the 4, a 3; deictic articles 0; quantifiers: all 1, every(thing) 1, no 1.
WBE9. CONJUNCTIONS AND COMPLEMENTIZERS
1 and or or; Conj;
2 if or whether; C;
3 that; C;
4 either … or or neither … nor; Conj;
5 if or whether; C;
6 if … then or either … or or … nor; Conj;
7 but;