Glossaryby a wh-element. The meaning is quite clear: it is a request for someone
to repeat or confirm the previous statement.
A: At the exam, I was asked about Zantedeschia.
B: You were asked about what?
ECM: see Exceptional Case-marking.
E-language: the language that is external to the speaker – the infinite set of
expressions defined by the I-language – that linguists have access to
when formulating their grammars
embedded clause: a clause that is part of a larger constituent (I know [that you
like him], the man [that you like].
endocentric structure: one that gets its properties from an element that it contains,
this element can function by itself as a whole phrase. Such phrases have a
head that determines their categorial nature. It is a requirement in X-bar
theory that phrases be endocentric. A noun projects a noun phrase, a verb
a verb phrase etc.
ergative language: a language where the subject of an intransitive verb and the
object of a transitive verb have the same Case form.
ergative verb: a verb that can appear in a VP either (a) with a single theme
argument functioning as the subject of the clause (The ship sank),
similarly to unaccusative structures or (b) in the presence of a light verb
together with an agentive subject (They sank the ship), when the structure is
similar to the structure of transitive verbs. As opposed to unaccusative
verbs, ergative verbs cannot appear in the existential there construction
(unless they are ambiguous between the two readings), and they are
typically verbs expressing a change of state, like break, explode, grow.
event structure: verbs can express simple or complex events. Event structure
describes what sub-events an event expressed by a certain verb is made up
of. This has an effect on the syntactic organisation of elements within the
VP. There is supposed to be an isomorphism between event structure and
the structure of the VP: a VP breaks up into sub-vPs/VPs in a one-to-one
correspondence with the sub-events.
Exceptional Case-marking (ECM): in the normal case the Case assigner and the
constituent which is assigned Case are in the same clause. There are
structures, however, where it is impossible, e. g. in I believe him to be
disappointed. The embedded clause contains non-finite Inflection,
which is not a Case assigner. The only option for the subject DP to be
assigned Case is by an outside governor, hence the term, ECM. The verb
believe is a potential Case assigner since it can also take a DP complement
to which it assigns accusative Case: I believe him.
exceptional clause: clauses selected by exceptional verbs such as believe. What
makes them exceptional is that the clauses introduced by them are not
CPs as clauses in general are, but IPs. Evidence for this comes from
ungrammatical structures like *I believe for him to be the best. It is the
insertion of the prepositional complementiser that makes the sentence
ungrammatical indicating that the position to host it (head of CP) is not
projected, the clause is not a CP.