Basic English Grammar with Exercises

The syntax of inflection

Besides the bound morpheme status of the negative, these languages differ from
English in that verbal stems are allowed to support more than one bound morpheme
and hence there is agglutination: complex words being formed from a series of
inflectional morphemes. The point is that in these languages the negative element
behaves like we have seen certain English light verbs do and hence they offer support
for the suggestion that the negative can be analysed as a light verb.
Note that the presence of the negative will not affect the use of aspectual auxiliaries
as these are inserted into the inflection position rather than moving to it:

(33) IP

DP I'

• I vP

-s v'

v vP

not v'

v VP

-en DP V'

the glass V

shatter

‘the glass has not shattered’

2.3 Tense and Agreement

From what has been said so far, we would expect that when there is no aspectual
morpheme to be supported and no negation, there will be no need to insert an auxiliary as
the main verb can move to support the inflection. Indeed this seems to be true as there is
no inserted auxiliary in such cases and the tense morpheme appears on the verb:

(34) he arrive-ed

There is a problem however with the assumption that it is the verb that undergoes
the movement in this case. This can be seen clearly when there is a VP adjunct. In the
previous chapter, we argued that VP adverbs are adjoined to a v/VP higher than the
position to which the verb moves. However, in the absence of any aspectual
morphemes, it seems that the inflection appears on the verb inside the v/VP:

(35) he [vP quickly [vP count-ed his fingers]]

Thus, under these conditions it does not seem that the verb moves to the inflection, but
rather that the inflection moves to the verb:

have