“[a]clause is only as big as it needs to be. It is an IP unless it has to be a CP.”
Grimshaw (1993)
What is the need?
Not all your books cater for everyone’s taste. For example, this book john likes…
Topicalization
This booki he ‘pres’ like t i
Wh-movement
Whati do you
like t i ?
Negative topicalization
Not a soul i did I
see t i
Adjunct CP
John,
I
like him
IP
NP
VP
John [IP John
V
hates [VP hates
NP
Bill Bill ]
-bar
IP
SPEC
I’
ī
I
VP
SPEC V’
V NP
John like this book ‘pres’ John like this book
What is a cp?
that he ‘pres’ like the book
Early child L1 clauses have no functional architecture, and thus lack IP and CP projections. e.g.
want book
Gradually, L1-English children acquire the functional architecture, and step into the IP-stage. e.g.
e.g.
Not all your books cater for everyone’s taste. For example, this book john likes, but that book he hates. His roommate, bill, prefers other books.
I want the book
Chinese speakers, since childhood, regard a CP as natural as an IP.
[IP我要这本书]
[CP这本书i [IP我要 ti]]
In English, a declarative, root CP never emerges free of context.
L1 acquisition in syntax
Let’s start from L1 acquisition…
According to Radford (1996), Children’s L1 acquisition consists of three stages, viz. VPstage, IP-stage, and CPstage.
exercises
1. John met Bill.
2. John asked whether Bill hated him.
3. 3. “John, why do you think that I hate you?”
Light verb “v”
The ball rolled down the hill. He rolled the ball down the hill.
Hierarchical Structure in Syntax
Verb phrase VP 动词短语
Inflection phrase IP 屈折短语
Complementizer phrase CP 标句语短语
This categorical constituent structure can be represented schematically in the form of a labeled tree-diagram, part of the skeleton of which is as the following:
Lecture 5
Phrase Hierarchy
Syntax ABC
Syntax is a branch of linguistics that studies how words are combined to form sentences and the rules that govern the formation of sentences.
THIS BOOK I WANT.
“This book John likes” can be
isolated as a sentence but may be regarded as odd by the native speakers of English. When it is embedded in the sentence group on the left, it sounds appropriate to the same informants.