Syntax I	 Assignment 5 		AUXILIARIES

Verb Forms

An English verb (other than 'be') has exactly five forms
(not necessarily all distinct):

base		break		take		throw		put
3sg.pres	breaks		takes		throws		puts
past		broke		took		threw		put
pr.part		breaking	taking		throwing	putting
pst.part	broken		taken		thrown		put

Some of the following sentences contain "Auxiliary" verbs:

(1)  The dinosaurs ate chickens.

(2)  Harvey will eat his breakfast.

(3)  Her face could frighten the spots off a leopard.

(4)  My monkey has made a mess of his cage.

(5)  The dinosaurs may have subsisted on worms.

(6)  The monkey has been being bad.

(7) *The dinosaurs are having eaten chickens.

(8) *My monkey is been bad.

(9) *Harvey has been shoulding eat his breakfast.

1.  Investigate sentences with auxiliary verbs (make up more).
NOTE: There is a very special auxiliary verb 'do'.  Do not try to
figure that one out. In other words, if you notice it, pretend you didn't.

2.  How many kinds of auxiliary verbs are there?

Note: 'have' and 'had' are not two different verbs, they are different
forms of the same verb.  This question is asking how many different
auxiliary verbs there are, and whether they divide into kinds, i.e.
sets of auxiliary verbs that syntactically behave alike.

3.  What constraints are there on the ordering of these verbs?

4.  What constraints are there on the form of the second V in
a V V sequence?  That is, if two verbs are adjacent (in the sentences
dealt with in this problem), can you say what form the second verb
is in if you know the identity of the first verb?
Are there any constraints on the form of the leftmost V in a VP?

MAKE SURE YOU UNDERSTAND WHAT "FORM" MEANS BEFORE YOU EVEN ATTEMPT
TO ANSWER THIS QUESTION.

5.  Revise the VP rule to accommodate these new constructions,
and state Form Rules to account for the requirements on Verb forms.

To illustrate how your grammar works, give trees for (4), (5), and (6).

As usual, discuss anything interesting.