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 have now, in principle, turned on the BU Learn site for this course. The sole purpose of that site for me is as a place to record the homework scores and other scores, and a place to display what I have in my spreadsheet as far as grades. What is there right now as I type this is basically the state of things as of the midterm—so homework assignments 1−4 and the midterm, as well as the letter grades I assigned for the midterm, and would have assigned for the homework and overall if for some reason the semester had ended right then. So, the homework grade is computed by dropping the lowest scoring homework and then averaging the percentages of the others, and the grading scale for both is the same as the one that I announced for the midterm.
Homework 5 is not in there yet, I’ll try to put that in there shortly, and there may be a couple of notes that I still have about revisions that I have not yet implemented. If you see something that looks wrong there, let me know. Even if I have a note to myself to revise a homework score, nothing is lost by sending me a note, though I think I should have those all fixed up pretty soon.
I’ll move on to putting together the example that we did in class next, but I wanted to get this up there, since I know at least a few people were wondering about this.
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.
I’ve gotten a couple of questions about where the practice midterms and keys are, sorry it wasn’t clearer. But if you’re still looking for them, they are on the schedule page (click “Schedule” up at the top of the page) and then look for March 4, the practice tests and keys are linked in there, as well as the “Summary I” reading that I handed out in class. (The key for homework 5 is not on the schedule, but on the “Readings” page, as announced in the previous blog post.)
Let me know if you don’t remember how to get the the readings page, but the key for homework #5 is there, for the purposes of studying for the upcoming midterm.