learned by the child; but the fact that a long-distance dependency in syntax expresses a lambda extraction of a bound
variable would appear to be a linguistic universal, hence one of the“tricks”in the UG toolkit.
It is worth mentioning that lambda extraction is not confined to Object-constituents. The equative and comparative
constructions in adjective phrases closely parallel relative clauses both syntactically and semantically (Bresnan 1973;
Postal 1974; Jackendoff 1977; Chomsky 1977). This is best brought out by corresponding paraphrases.
(12) a.Relative clause: I met the man who Beethoven likes.
Paraphrase: Beethoven likes some man; I metthatman.
b. Equative: John became as rich as Bill became.
Paraphrase: Bill became rich to some degree; John becamethatrich.
c. Comparative: John became richer than Bill became.
Paraphrase: Bill became rich to some degree; John became rich to a degree greater thanthat.
A conceptual structure for the equative can be constructed along the lines of (13), using the lambda-extraction
notation (the comparative is a bit more complex, and I forgo it).
12.1.4 Parallels in lexical semantics
Thesortofconceptualcombinationassociated withvariablesatisfactionisalreadyfamiliarfrom section11.8. Therewe
built up complex verb meanings byfilling variables of primitive functions likeCAUSE,GO, andBEwith content,
sometimes leaving new variables (as inenter) and sometimes eliminating variables altogether (as insnow). We see from
this that the same principle of conceptual combination can function either in lexical or in phrasal semantics.
The other principles of phrasal combination introduced in this section also