Final

Due Wednesday 12/10, to my box (Padelford A-210), by 5pm (stapled hard copy) or to CollectIt by 5pm (pdf only).

This exam counts for 35% of your course grade.

No late finals will be accepted.

Note: You may not discuss the final with other students (until after everyone has turned it in). Please send any questions about the final directly to me (via email) rather than posting on GoPost. I will respond by email and post answers as appropriate on the GoPost. Please read GoPost.

Problem 1. A Tree (60pts)

A. Draw a tree for the following sentence, using the grammar from the textbook and according to the instructions below. (NB: This problem is not only about long distance dependencies, but also about multiple phenomena involving the SPR feature and the rules and principles of our grammar.)

• This sonata I love and I believe is easy to teach people to play.

Instructions

1. Show the whole tree (i.e., no triangles under nodes).
2. Assume lexical entries for the words instantiating appropriate types from the grammar. Note that you'll need to assume the S-complement taking verb type you developed in HW 6 and the Bare NP rule from HW 4. Note also that there is an object-control-verb in that sentence.
3. Label each node with an appropriate abbreviation (e.g., NP).
4. Show the values of SPR, COMPS, GAP, and STOP-GAP where they are non-empty. These values should include tags where they are identified with other structures in the tree. At least one instance of each tag should be associated with a category abbreivation (NP). If the grammar requires coindexing (but not complete identification), show that with a subcript (NP_i).
5. Please do NOT show the value for any other features. The tree is big enough as it is!
6. Use tags and indices to indicate identities involving the features you show and nodes in the tree.
7. Check your work: The correct tree has 26 nodes, not counting the leaves (word forms). I found 33 non-empty values for SPR, COMPS, GAP and STOP-GAP collectively. I used tags numbered 1-14. (You don't have to use the exact same numbers in the same places; this is meant to help you check that you have the right number of sets of identities.)

B. Describe each step in the cascade of identities that link the INST value of the 'sonata' predication to the SONG value of 'play' predication. Your answer should take the form of an enumerated list. Each item in the list should describe one step, i.e., state which features are required to have the same value and state which lexical entry, rule or principle of the grammar requires this.

I found 22 steps in this chain. This does not count any lexical rules except for one step which takes this form: "The word structure for _____ is licensed by the output of the _____ Lexical Rule and so its _____ is identified with its _____." To start you off, here are the first and last:

• 1. The lexical entry for sonata identifies its INDEX with the INST of its 'sonata' predication.
• ...
• 22. The lexical entry for play identifies the INDEX of its second ARG-ST element with the SONG role in its 'play' predication.

Problem 2. Some Lexical Rules (40pts)

A. For each word in the following sentence, list the lexical rules involved in licensing its word structure. (Again, this question is cumulative, and not only about LDDs. Also, while you do not need to provide a tree for your answer, it might help you work through the problem to sketch one out.)

• It is expected that these problems can't be easy to solve, and they aren't.

Check your work: Though there are 14 words in the sentence, they collectively represent 19 applications of lexical rules. One lexical rule is used 7 times. There is at least one point of ambiguity here, in that one lexical rule could apply to two different words in the sentence, but only applies to one in each parse. Either one will be accepted as correct.

B. Show the word structure for aren't as it appears in this sentence. Include the effects of the lexical rule(s) it undergoes as well as constraints inherited from types (e.g., those on auxv-lxm and its supertypes, as well as those on word). You don't need to show the RESTR values of the elements of the ARG-ST and valence lists or any other information that is underspecified by the combination of the lexical entry and lexcial rules but rather `unifed in' from other parts of the tree.

C. How does our analysis capture the fact that be is required before easy in this example? That is, why don't the following (with nothing there or the other semantically empty auxiliary) parse?

1. *It is expected that these problems can't easy to solve, and they aren't.
2. *It is expected that these problems can't do easy to solve, and they aren't.

D. (Extra Credit) How does our analysis capture the fact that solve must not be passive, i.e., how does it predict the ungrammaticality of the following string?

1. *It is expected that these problems can't be easy to be solved, and they aren't.