CAS LX 522 F08

I was just reminded that in all the excitement, I forgot to post the key to homework 10. Sorry about that. It is now linked in on the syllabus page as well as in the first sentence of this post.

It’s been called to my attention that there is a typo in the extra credit homework, under (37), 5th line down, where I refer to trying to move which violin out of a wh-island, when I meant to refer to which sonata. It’s probably figure-out-able, but just for the record, it’s supposed to be which sonata.

Hi everyone. Ok, here’s the deal with the extra credit homework (trees are easy to draw).

The entire homework is relatively elaborate and it’s a bit more “thinky” than pretty much any of the homeworks so far. It’s not so much to practice doing things, but to think your way through the problem. You’ll notice that the instructions are practically a small paper, and you have to read it pretty thoroughly. So, I expect it will take you a while to do the whole thing.

There’s a sense in which it would be sad to do just part of it, because the aim of the project is to come up with a tree for Trees are easy to draw, but this involves seeing why it is difficult and dealing with the problems that arise. So, the extra credit homework takes you through step by step, trying to bring the problems up and having you identify them. So, if you stop partway through, you won’t have whatever satisfaction there might be in getting to the actual answer.

However, time is also finite, and so I do want to make it possible to do as much as you have time for (or as much as you can before getting stuck, if you do) and still get credit for having done so when you turn it in. So, what I will do is this:

Points from the extra credit assignment (there are 43) will augment your second-lowest homework score, and can augment your third-lowest homework score by up to 8. My rationale for this is that the idea is that this is supposed to be a replacement for the second-lowest score, but I want it to be possible to do less than the whole thing. What this does mean, however, is that if your second- and third-lowest scores are 30s, then you only need to collect 10 points from this extra credit homework before you hit the ceiling, with both of those two counting as 35s. You have more to gain from this if you have a couple of relatively low scores among your homework scores.

Also, as promised before, if you did the BUCLD writeups, this redundantly covers the second-lowest homework score, so if you wrote up two talks well, there are only 8 points available from this extra credit assignment to apply to the third-lowest homework score.

It’s a bit complex, but at least now I hope it is well-defined. For any homework that I still have left to grade, I’ll try to get the points up on the Blackboard site very soon.

If you’re interested in this level of detail, here’s how I will break down the points:

Task 1: [4] Constituency tests
Task 2: [2] Short answer about constituency
Task 3: [6] Finish tree for it is easy for me to draw trees
Task 4: [1] Draw case assignment arrows
Task 5: [2] Short answer about idioms
Task 6: [5] Shortish answer about binding
Task 7: [4] Short answer identifying a wh-island violation
Task 8: [3] Draw tree for John’s book
Task 9: [1] Draw case arrow
Task 10: [3] Draw tree for book’s SELF
Task 11: [1] Identify unchecked feature that crashes one derivation
Task 12: [3] Shortish answer about wh-islands
Task 13: [8] Draw the tree for trees are easy to draw

Good luck with studying and with finals.

I’ve gotten a number of questions about how to handle the do that shows up in a couple of the homework problems.

Here’s the deal. Check the textbook, p. 192, where you will find the Pronouncing Tense Rule. It says:

(160) Pronouncing Tense Rule (PTR)
In a chain (T[tense], v[uInfl:tense]), pronounce the tense features on v if v is the head of T’s sister.

Looking up a bit on the page, a chain is “an object which is formed by an Agree operation…when T checks tense features with little v, T and v are in a chain.”

This comes back in the discussion of Did Medea poison Jason? on pp. 341-2.

From the class handouts, look at handout #6a on pages 7-8. It’s also contained on handout #8a on pages 2-3. Handout #10a at the top of page 4 has an example of a yes-no question with did.

I think there actually isn’t an example of a wh-question with do on the handouts, but the principle is the same as in the situations I mentioned above.

Basically, the way we are thinking about this is as a pronunciation rule. So do isn’t actually in the tree. It’s rather like what we said about the of that represents of-case. If the conditions for the Pronouncing Tense Rule are met, then T is pronounced as an inflected do. That is, intuitively, if T winds up “far away” from the v (and T valued the [uInfl:] feature of v), then T gets pronounced as do and v is pronounced uninflected. T is “far away” when, e.g., T’s sister is NegP, or when T has moved to C. You don’t really need to write do anywhere in the tree, though if you do write it somewhere, it should presumably be basically as a pronunciation of T.

You might recall that in book of poetry, the of poetry PP is a complement to the noun book, which we took to be partly due to the “intrinsic” nature of the of poetry property. Is about poetry in book about poetry the same?

Rather than try to figure this out based on puzzling about what is and isn’t intrinsic, let’s just test it.

One reason we know that of poetry in book of poetry is inside the NP is that you can’t get other PPs between it and the N. Another reason is that one-replacement (at least if you speak a dialect of English like mine) has to replace of poetry if it is used.

(1) Give me…

a. The book of poetry on the table

b. *The book on the table of poetry

c. ??This book of poetry and that one of music

For me, at least, about poetry doesn’t work this way.

(2) Give me…

a. The book about gardening on the table

b. The book on the table about gardening

c. This book about gardening and that one about fishing

So, of poetry in book of poetry is different from about poetry in book about poetry.

That is to say, you want to attach about himself in songs about himself as an adjunct to nP, rather than inside the NP.

I’ve had a couple of people ask me about to and about the fact that when I drew, e.g., try-sentences on the handout, I didn’t draw to moving to T.

And, in fact, to does not move to T. We learned this back on homework #5, with respect to the sentence I wanted Joss not to have been making movies. It’s something special about nonfinite T (or, perhaps, the movement of the highest auxiliary to T is something special about finite T).

Rather close to the due moment, but just a note: I’ve gotten a few questions about what I intended on HW7, 3) of part 2, when I said “Same rules as above.”

What I don’t mean is that you should draw two trees. Just draw one tree. There’s no relevant ambiguity in (f). The rules I was really referring to were: Just draw the tree(s), no steps, no features being checked.

Finally, I had a chance to post some examples like those we worked out near the end of class. You can follow this link to get them: His book’s cover melted.

Ok, ok. I’ve been getting quite a lot of questions about homework 7, and I think I need to spend a bit more time talking about these things before I call time on this homework.

So: homework #7 is not due tomorrow.

Due to the holiday next Tuesday, this means I’m giving one more week on this.

Homework #7 is due Thursday Nov 13.

And I’ll talk about related issues in class tomorrow (Nov 6).

Thinking about homework 6 some more, a couple of things:

First, concerning the features of elect, there was supposed to be a [uN*] feature there. I have posted an updated key to reflect this (but you should mark your paper copy). I will record a score 1 point higher for everyone across the board, because the informal polling suggested that it was pretty much universally marked off.

Second, homework 6 was simply too short, and I don’t think holding it to the 35-point scale that the previous homeworks were on makes much sense. I will therefore cut it in half, making it worth 17.5 points.

So, to summarize: To get your actual score, take the number written on your homework, add one, divide by two, and consider it to be out of 17.5.

When I do the computation at the end, homework 6 will only be dropped (if it has the lowest percentage score) where the outcome is better than dropping the second-lowest, since homework 6 is now worth less.