Basic English Grammar with Exercises

Exercise 5

Exercise 5

In the Italian DP il mio libro the sequence determiner+possessive pronoun is

grammatical. According to the text when there is a possessive pronoun in [Spec, DP],

there is an unpronounced D head in D and that element is in complementary

distribution with other types of determiners. One problem concerns the order of

elements in the Italian example, as the element assumed to be sitting in specifier

position follows the element assumed to occupy the head position. Secondly, it is

difficult to maintain the idea that there is an unpronounced D head in complementary

distribution with the definite determiner as there are languages where the two can co-

occur and no ungrammaticality results.

Exercise 6

In the DP a few too many parking tickets there is a singular indefinite determiner head

which clearly cannot be construed with the head of the NP. Thus, it must be assumed

that the indefinite determiner is inside the AP. For example, it could be assumed that

the indefinite article is the head of a DP occupying the specifier position of the AP but

the AP itself should actually contain some nominal element itself. Alternatively,

perhaps the structure is something like a few parking tickets too many parking tickets

where the first instance of parking tickets is deleted. This is clearly wrong as there is

no number agreement between the determiner and the deleted element, the situation is

the same as with the whole phrase. However, this seems to concern more the structure

of the AP itself than the DP.

In the DP many a pleasant day the first problem concerns number agreement, or

rather the lack of it, between the specifier (many) and the head (day). The second

problem is raised by the order of elements as [Spec, NP] seems to precede the D head,

contrary to assumptions about the structure of DPs.

In the DP this very moment there is an adverb between the D head and the N head.

The oddity of the example is reflected in that if this adverb is present it is not possible

to modify the N head further, e.g. *this very beautiful moment/*this beautiful very

moment (in the first example very is not construed with beautiful but with moment).

Exercise 7

What you have to notice first in example (1) is that this structure is ambiguous: with

mistakes can refer to sentences or an analysis. This is an instance of structural

ambiguity. With mistakes cannot be a complement in either of the interpretations, since

it is not selected by either sentences or analysis. In both cases with mistakes functions

as an adjunct, the ambiguity can be explained by the different positions where the

adjunct appears within the tree. In one of the interpretations the Prepositional Phrase is

the adjunct of analysis, in this case we have the meaning when the analysis itself

contains the mistakes. In the other interpretation, when it is the sentences which

contain the mistakes (with a potentially good analysis of the bad sentences), the

Prepositional Phrase with mistakes is the adjunct of sentences.

The whole structure is a DP, since it is the determiner head that defines the

definiteness of the nominal expression.

The two trees therefore will look as follows: