COMMENTS ON ASSIGNMENT 2

The discussion of DP vs. NP hypotheses laid out the issues nicely and
engaged some interesting and difficult problems. The analytical
choices considered were reasonable and the arguments that were brought
to bear had real force. The consideration of the possibility of
ellipsis with demonstratives was particularly good (in fact the entire
discussion of demonstratives was handled very well).

MORE PARTICULAR COMMENTS

Some parts of the discussion were insufficiently treed.  For example,
on p. 6 there is talk about a DP which pretty clearly should be a D,
but since there are not enough trees, it's difficult to be sure.

P. 2: in the tree at the top of the page here, the PP `of the rebel
alliance' is surely a complement of the N `leader' (note the
correspondence between `leader of the resistance' and the VP `lead the
resistance' in which it is clear that `the resistance' is a
complement). This is handled correctly in the tree on the next page.

p. 3: it's not clear (from this discussion at least) in what sense the
DP hypothesis implies `a much more strict syntactic representation in
regard to X-bar theory' (first line of the page).

p. 6: The discussion of determiner-less mass nouns and plural count
nouns is one place where reference to the Quirk and Greenbaum reading
would have helped (see their discussion, from a very different
perspective, of null articles in these cases).

p. 6: The discussion of selectional properties of null D's is good. We
want to add one observation, which concerns the worry expressed in the
following sentence: "The problem here is deciding whether or not we
want to give the power of subcategorization to elements which are not
represented in the surface structure." We need, of course, to be
cautious and sparing in our appeal to null elements (they can make
analyses too easy and theoretical proposals self-validating). But one
central property of such elements is that they are *only*
phonologically null. Syntactic and semantic principles never care
about phonological properties (syntactic operations will never depend
on whether the initial phoneme of some phrase is bilabial or
velar). It follows in turn that to the extent that we postulate null
elements, we should expect and demand that their syntactic and
semantic properties be exactly the same as those of elements whose
existence we can be more confident about.

p. 7, it looks like there is some confusion about what a constituent
is.  Make sure you know what that term means.

On p. 8, there is some talk about "proper subsets" that does not
make sense.  Make sure you know (and we know) what you are talking
about.

Also on p. 8, is the structure [NP[D[this]]] X-bar compliant?

p. 10:  As you have noted, PossP would have to have exactly the same
external distribution as NP, in this analysis.

It's not clear what is meant by "a functional layer C-commanding NP".

p. 11: "... the determiner head of possessive -'s can subcategorize
for its complement NP to mandate that it have a null determiner" This
is difficult to understand.  This difficulty is related to the
inadequate use of trees to illustrate your structural points.  Do not
skimp on trees, when they are needed.



A few stylistic comments:

(a) Doesn't Google Docs allow you to number pages? It would make
commentary  much easier if the pages were numbered.

(b) "in regards to" is almost always incorrect.  Try "in regard to"

(c)  You need to learn how to punctuate around the word "however".
Most people do not know how to do this, but it is not that hard.

(d)  "one in the same" is not the expression.  It's "one and the same".

(e) p.6 "the nouns they modify": this isn't strictly speaking a
relation of modification. Better to use the suitably vague phrase:
"the nouns they combine with". 

EXTRA CREDIT SECTION:

First bullet: The relative clause in this example is a so-called
`non-restrictive' or `appositive' relative clause.  These have very
particular properties and we may need to talk about them.

It is encouraging and scary that you find something to talk about that
is even more interesting and difficult than proper nouns. In this
section, you are trying to venture into the structure of "partitives",
and most who have ventured into this swamp have never come back.
Whoever manages the discussion of this topic will need lots of luck.