For use in reviewing what’s going on as of now in the syntactic system we’ve put together, I’ve created a fairly elaborate derivation of the sentence Pat must not have been sending flowers to Chris. It includes pretty much everything relevant that happens along the way in creating this sentence.

This includes the information about T that I provided in the review session: Specifically, T always has a [uN] feature, which causes the closest NP to move (that is, copied and then Merged) at the top of the tree.

One note about this: The derivation I provide here is preliminary. There are a few things that we’re about to cover just after the midterm that will formalize a few things. In particular, we will shortly be dividing uninterpretable features into “strong” and “weak” subtypes, and we will spend some time going over exactly how the inflectional endings (like -ing, -en, and past tense endings) get attached to the verbal and auxiliary forms. For the moment, since we haven’t covered this in class, it is left informal. The things that are informal now but which will be formalized after the midterm are listed below. About a week after the midterm, I’ll give you an updated version of this derivation that has the additional formalizations in it.

T always has a [uN] feature, which motivates the movement (copying, then Merging) of the highest NP in the structure to that point (the one closest to T) into the specifier of TP. This is the subject.

If there are any auxiliaries in the sentence (that is, if there is a modal, or Perf have, or Prog be), then the highest auxiliary in the tree (the one closest to T) always moves to T.

V always moves to v.

The inflectional ending on M, Prog, Perf, and v (i.e. V+v) is determined by whichever of T, M, Prog, or Perf is immediately above in the tree. One of these just below T is realized with a tense ending (past or present). One of these just below M is realized as a bare form. One of these just below Prog is realized with an -ing ending. One of these just below Perf is realized with an -en ending. Take a look at the example derivation to see how this works, and maybe think about variations on it to convince yourself that this will yield the right results: Pat was singing, Pat has been singing, Pat must sing. We don’t yet have a way to handle cases where do is inserted, we’ll deal with that after the midterm.