Homework 3 more comments

There are a couple more questions that I’ve had multiple people asking me, so I’ll post them my thoughts on them here as well.

Problem 1 (Korean). As for how to handle the subject marker ka and object marker lul: that’s part of the problem that you want to solve. But, let me say a couple of things about it anyway. So, first of all, these are subject and object markers (or, case markers) in Korean, meaning that any subject NP or object NP can have these attached to them. Second, the subject marker should appear on all subjects and only on subjects, and the object marker should appear on all objects and only on objects. So one part of the question is: what is a subject? What is an object? Abstractly you want the subject to be a constituent that contains an NP and a subject marker, and the object to be a constituent that contains an NP and an object marker. We have nothing else really to go on in terms of what category you make them, so I’d just make them a new category (not Det, not Adj, probably not P although you might be able to get P to work). Also, at least the way things are glossed, the e and eykey seem to be more like postpositions of category P (unlike ka and lul).

Problem 2 (out from under the sofa). For this one, the idea is that (14-21) are all sentences that are performing individual constituency tests. So, for example, (15). (15) has coordinated from under the sofa and from behind the chair. The note stipulates that this means “out from under the sofa and out from behind the chair”, so semantically out is applying to both from under the sofa and from behind the chair. This is essentially the coordination test for constituency, it is telling us that from under the sofa is a constituent. If you look at trees (11-13), you will see that from under the sofa is a constituent in (11) and (12) but not in (13). That is, in (13), there is no node that contains from under the sofa and nothing else (the smallest constituent in (13) that contains from under the sofa also contains out). So, in the table, you would put check, check, X in the column for (15).

Problem 3 (syrup). In Part 2, you are asked to find a proform replacement for from Québec. There is no great option here, but there was the best I could come up with. Thence maybe, if you are feeling archaic. In Part 4, Chris will test fine as a constituent with the proform replacement test, but not for the clefting test.

I hope these notes help answer questions you might have, let me know if others arise.