Due to a copy and paste error, tree (d) on the key for homework 7 had MP above NegP, but NegP is supposed to be above MP. I have posted yet another fixed version of the key, but the grader also graded it based on the erroneous key, so it is quite likely that your homework has an extra point taken off for that when it shouldn’t have been. Let me know if you haven’t already if this happened to you, I’ll adjust the score.

It looks like I missed a couple of things on the key for homework 7 that I handed out. In sentence (a) the movement arrow connecting the trace of Perf and its moved position wasn’t included, but should have been there. And in sentence (d) there should have been an accusative case arrow from v to the big DP about the cooking of the peas. I’ve posted the key with those two corrections to the readings page.

I’ve gotten quite a few semi-panicked emails from people who had not noticed that I’d set the homework 7 due date to Tuesday (a week from when I handed it out), but several also made the very sensible point that since the HW6 hasn’t been returned yet, it would be helpful to see that first in case there is something useful to be gleaned from the key and/or potential errors made on that.

Homework 6 and its key will be arriving in your hands tomorrow, but I will go ahead and reset us to the Thursday schedule. I’ll send out one more email blast so that anyone staying up working on this right now can contemplate sleeping instead.

I’ve adjusted the schedule, homework 7 is due now on Thursday, and the subsequent homeworks will be Thursday-based. Homework 8 will go out and be due on a Thursday, Homework 9 will go out on a Thursday and be due on a Tuesday due to not meeting on the relevant Thursday.

When I was putting homework 7 together, I thought “this is too short, I should add a couple more sentences,” and thought further “in fact, I should add some trees that involve nominalized clauses.” So I did. At the last minute. Without drawing up the key. You can tell that I did this because the instructions say to draw the trees for (a-c), and then I provided five sentences—in fact, the intent there is for you to draw all five trees. Except we don’t know how to draw (b).

Specifically, (1b) as it was given is The hamster’s having survived was reported. We don’t know how to do that. You might recall there was some discussion of the fact that (a) the nominalized clauses we were mostly talking about don’t have any auxiliaries, yet this (1b) has have (Perf), and (b) there is another type of nominalized clause that is still internally verbal. The test for whether the nominalized clause is nominal or verbal is to try to put an adjective or adverb in—if you can put in an adjective, it’s nominal, if you can put in an adverb, it’s verbal. In the (1b) I gave you, it takes an adverb (The hamster’s tenaciously having survived was reported) and not an adjective (*The hamster’s tenacious having survived was reported). So, it’s internally verbal and we don’t know how to draw those.

The problem can be solved by getting rid of the having, so do this version of (1b) instead:

(1b’) The hamster’s running was reported.

This one could take an adjective (The hamster’s incredible running was reported), so it is of the type that we know how to do.

I’ve now drawn up a tree for sentence we went over in class. Click on the image below to get the PDF. [Update: there was a small typo in the first version, I’ve replaced it with v1.1 here—let me know if you see any others.]

Or just click on this link: A huge sandwich has not been cooked by them.

I’ve gotten a couple of questions about homework 6, here are some quick thoughts about them.

First, yes, in the example tree, I provided an example that has a proper name. We actually still haven’t done proper names in class, but they’ll wind up looking like the example, with a null determiner that is specifically for proper names.

There is also one null determiner in the sentences you are to draw, namely in (1), despite the fact that we only saw our first null determiner yesterday.

This I think isn’t in the book, and it isn’t explicitly in the handouts although we talked through it, but a by-phrase in a passive adjoins to PassP.

The textbook in its discussion of agreement between D and N uses the feature [unum: ], but we’re using [uphi: ] in class. Our version is more general, using just number is a bit more English-specific, but the idea is the same, number features (and in principle, also person and gender features) are copied from the N to the D.

Since a pronoun is just a D, it must not need agreement features, but rather come with them from the start (since it can’t be getting them from N).

I’ll try to add more details later or answer other questions as they arise.