Basic English Grammar with Exercises

Exercise 5

Exercise 5

(1) a Which book did John buy?

b Short stories, I don’t like.

c Short stories I expect nobody likes.

d Mary seems to hate big cats.

e I know the researcher who is believed to have invented cold fusion.

-role is assigned by a lexical head in a local configuration. A lexical head can assign

-role either to the constituents in its specifier or in its complement position.

Sentence (1a) is problematic as the lexical entry of the verb ‘buy’ as in (2a) states that

it should assign the ‘theme’ -role to a DP immediately following it as in structure

(2b).

(2) a buy : [–F, –N, +V]


-grid: <agent theme>

subcat: nominal

b vP

DP v'

(agent)

v VP

buy 1 DP V'

(patient)

V

e 1

But there is no DP in this position. In fact the object of the verb appears in the

initial position in the sentence. Therefore the sentence should be ungrammatical. But it

is not. So the assumption is that in the initial structure the wh-DP was in Spec,VP, the

canonical theme position, where it is assigned the theme theta role, them it moves to

the sentence-initial position. Why does it have to move there? Regular theme

complements do not undergo this movement (John bought Ulysses.). However, those

DPs that are marked for +wh feature have to move to sentence-initial position to fulfil

their operator function.

The verb like in (1b) is a transitive verb. It has an experiencer and a theme

argument as is illustrated in its lexical entry in (3a).

(3) like :cat: [–F, –N, +V]


-grid: <agent theme>

subcat: nominal

As the lexical entry shows there should be a nominal complement in the sister node

of the head but this complement seems to be in the initial position of the sentence