Syntax 3, Assignment 2							Fall 2021
Due Thursday October 7


This problem is about a difference between DPs and CPs.  We know that they can both
occur as complements to Verbs, but DPs can never occur as complements to Nouns or Adjectives,
while CPs certainly can.  (Provide some examples of this.)

(In English, it appears that CPs cannot be complements of Prepositions, but I advise you
to ignore this fact for now.  You could give some examples to show it, though.)

1.  It seems that DPs need something that CP's don't need.  Let's call it mystery sauce.
V and P can provide mystery sauce for their complements, but A and N cannot.  To get a
little more sense for this difference, consider a language like German, which has four
morphological cases (Nominative, Genitive, Accusative, Dative).  Ps and Vs can require
their complement DPs to be in particular cases:

(1) aus dem Wasser	[DAT]	"out of the water"
(2) durch das Wasser	[ACC]	"through the water"
(3) dem FUhrer folgen	[DAT]	"follow the leader"
(4) den FUhrer loben	[ACC]	"praise the leader"

Swapping the cases leads to ungrammaticality: *aus das Wasser, *durch dem Wasser,
*den FUhrer folgen, *dem FUhrer loben.  As in English, Nouns and Adjectives can't have
DPs as complements.

Question: do PPs need mystery sauce?

If you know another language, answer these same questions for that language.

2.  Remembering the VP-internal subject hypothesis, draw proposed deep structures for

(5)  Harvey scared me.
(6)  That Harvey was yelling scared me.

Now observe

(7) *It scared me Harvey.
(8)  It scared me that Harvey was yelling.

Can you relate this in any way to the need for DPs to get mystery sauce?

3.  Now observe

(9)   Harvey's proposal was debated.
(10) *it was debated Harvey's proposal.
(11)  Whether to pay the fine was debated.
(12)  It was debated whether to pay the fine.

Same question.

Now if this relates in any way to something you have learned in a previous
syntax class, relate it.  Be careful to do so in a way such that I can
understand it.