Linguistics 113							Spring 2007

Assignment 12   (MIDTERM)
Due Monday  May 14

I.

Show how the following two sentences are generated by your grammar.

   (1)  How many students each program admitted is going to be too difficult
	to find out.

   (2)  Why do you think the pygmies are so difficult to convince to agree
	to let themselves be photographed in the daytime?


II. Relative Clauses

There is a class of Nouns (called "rumor nouns") that can take a CP complement:

   (3)  The fact that pigs can't fly disturbs me.

   (4)  Never ignore the possibility that a pig might fly.

   (5)  The rumor that Harvey keeps a pig in his yard is being spread by
	his neighbors.

Most nouns are not rumor nouns:

   (7) *The cat that pigs can't fly disturbs me.

   (8) *Never ignore the ignorance that a pig might fly.

What needs to be said in the grammar to account for this?

In this problem we will not be concerned particularly with rumor nouns.
Consider the following:

   (9)  The cat that can't fly disturbs me.

  (10)  Never ignore the ignorance that a pig might have.

  (11)  That healthy pig that Harvey bought ate my hamster.

  (12)  I'm looking for the book that I found that recipe in.

  (13)  The man that you met's dog is the dog that bit my pig.

First, determine the overall structure of these sentences.  What is
"the man that you met" in (13)?

Second, determine whether any (new) transformational operation has taken
place in these sentences.  If so, formulate a statement of it.  Discuss
anything interesting.





III. More Relative Clauses

Now consider these:

  (14)  The person who has been eating my porridge is in deep trouble.

  (15)  I'm tired of the lies which the dwarves have been telling.

  (16)  The prince whose car the princess was riding in was me.

Investigate this kind of construction carefully.  Propose whatever modifications
to the grammar are necessary so that such sentences will be generated.

IV.  More Facts To Consider

  (17)  The pig that we all thought Sally believed was about to fly just went
	to sleep.

  (18)  We must put a stop to the vicious rumor that the prosecution says
	our client has been accused of spreading.

  (19)  The cookbook in which I thought I had the best hope of finding the
	recipe is unfortunately in storage in San Jose.

What do these examples show about these constructions?  (Make up more; these
are just pointers.)  If your analysis so far does not account for them, fix
it so that it does.  Then show explicitly how such sentences are derived.
Discuss anything interesting.

V.  Now For Something A Little Bit Hard

The following examples (and others like them) illustrate something new about
the constructions investigated here.

  (20) *Which book did Sue meet the man that wrote?

  (21) *The can that the pearls that the woman put in were stolen has
	disappeared.

  (22) *We need to find out whose car the crook who was thought to be driving
	abandoned a puppy in the parking lot.

First, show that these sentences are generated by your grammar; or if you
think they are not, show exactly why not.

If they are, what generalization can you state about what is going on here?

VI. A Possible Explanation

How much of what you observed in Part V would be accounted for if we assume
that all movements are successive cyclic?