Having discussed a bit the status of reports about polls<\/i> in homework #4 with a couple of people, I have a couple of things to observe about that.<\/p>\n
I can say right at the outset that the way I intended this to work was basically like letters to Peter<\/i> on Adger’s p. 107. That is report<\/i> in this case “needs a P” [u<\/i>P]. Whether that is the right way to think about reports<\/i> though (or letters<\/i>, for that matter) is debatable. If it needs a P, then it should presumably be bad without a P. Except it’s find to say reports<\/i> by itself (I read reports all night<\/i>). We could handle that one of two ways. One way is to say that there are two nouns report<\/i>, one of which needs a P and the other of which doesn’t. That’s kind of how I suggested looking at eat<\/i> (Pat ate<\/i> vs. Pat ate a sandwich<\/i>).<\/p>\n
However, it’s nicer not to have to say that, it would be better if there was just the one noun report<\/i>. And it seems like about polls<\/i> is really kind of a modifier (like heavy<\/i> in heavy reports<\/i>). We know basically how to do that when a PP modifies the verb phrase. You could extend that same idea to noun phrases (adjoin the modifier to the completed NP). And it seems like this is right. On the table<\/i> is uncontroversially this kind of modifier, and you can say both reports about polls on the table<\/i> and reports on the table about polls<\/i>. I’ll leave it up to you to decide why that’s an interesting fact. But it does suggest that the right<\/i> way to look at about polls<\/i> here is as a modifier like on the table<\/i>.<\/p>\n
Nevertheless, I’ll take either of these approaches as correct.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Having discussed a bit the status of reports about polls in homework #4 with a couple of people, I have a couple of things to observe about that. I can say right at the outset that the way I intended this to work was basically like letters to Peter on Adger’s p. 107. That is …<\/p>\n