Syntax B							Winter 2022

Assignment 4:	Relative Clauses				Due 2/1/22


I.  Rumor Nouns

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.
(Except that you might want to note that they are islands to extraction,
as seen previously.)

II.  Some Relative Clauses

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.
  (14)  That coat I bought that has a hidden pocket got stolen.

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

Second, what do you think is the internal structure of "that healthy pig
that Harvey bought" in (11)?

Third, 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:

  (15)  The person who has been eating my porridge is in deep trouble.
  (16)  I'm tired of the lies which the dwarves have been telling.
  (17)  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

  (18)  The pig that we all thought Sally believed was about to fly just went
	to sleep.
  (19)  We must put a stop to the vicious rumor that the prosecution says
	our client has been accused of spreading.
  (20)  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.

To figure out what's going on here, you'll need some ungrammatical
examples.  Make them up yourself.

Discuss anything interesting.

V.  The structure of Relative Clauses

I am assuming that we are all agreed that relative clauses are adjuncts,
but there is a question as to where they are adjoined.  The data in this problem
should help to answer that question.

A.  'one' Anaphora

There is an anaphoric process involving the element 'one':

(1)  I could choose any car I wanted, so I chose the red one.
(2)  We used to have a pretty simple theory of syntax, but now we have a complex one.
(3)  The youngest lawyer in the firm is better than the oldest one.
(4)  The senior lawyer in this firm is better than the one in that firm.
(5)  If you don't have one, you should go out and buy a big black beautiful cadillac
     with wire wheels.

'one' is called an anaphor, which just means that its interpretation is copied from
some other element in the structure, called its "antecedent".  Anaphors substitute for
particular kinds of constituent, which makes them useful as tests for constituent
structure.  So the question here is: what kind of constituent does 'one' substitute
for?

Example (5) might throw you off if you don't know this: there is a low-level
morphological rule that says that "a one" is pronounced "one".

B.  Based on your answer to part I, what must you conclude about the constituent
structure of the examples below?

(6)  I read the book that Juan recommended, but I didn't read the one that Maria recommended.
(7)  I didn't read the first book that Juan recommended, but I did read the second one.
(8)  If you don't have one, you should buy a cadillac that has wire wheels.

C. One fact about coordination is that only constituents can be coordinated:

(9) *One very and three somewhat happy raccoons were playing in the garden.

So consider:

(10) All books that are recommended by the Times and plays that are positively reviewed in
at least one national culture magazine will be eligible for the Fafnir prize.

(11) Every ant that bites me and bee that stings me will die.

(12) These privileges that you like and responsibilities that you hate define your life.

What do you conclude about the structure of relative clauses?

D.  There is an ellipsis process called "NP Ellipsis":

(13) We need to adopt some theory of ellipsis, so why not Chomsky's?
(14) If we can't attend Jim's, maybe we can go to Maziar's open lecture on how to skin a frog.
(15) This way of doing things is better than that.

First, convince yourself that all of these and similar examples involve eliding an NP.
Then, consider the following:

(16) My own secret that nobody knows about is less disturbing than Marie's.

What does this tell you about the structure of relative clauses?

E.  Since you may have changed your theory by now (and even if you haven't)
can you still account for stacked relative clauses?  (There were some of these earlier in the assignment.)