NP Movement

1. NP Movement Passives, Raising: When NPs are not in their theta positions.

2. Locality restriction on theta roles Leave agent i Adrian left Jo left her pencil *it left (where it is an expletive) Must be in same clause *[I want Bradleyi [that left]] *Johni thinks [that left]

3. Locality Condition on Theta Roles Theta roles must be assigned within the clause same clause as the predicate that assigns them.

4. A Problem [Johni is likely [ to leave]]. John is the subject of is likely. Is it theta marked by is likely???? NO! (cf. it is like that John left) It is theta marked by leave!!! But it isn�t in the same clause! Yikes!

5. is likely [[That John will leave]j is likely ] It is likely [that John will leave]j Proposition j it is likely [CP that john will leave ]

6. In the wrong place! John is likely to leave John is theta marked by leave, but appears in the subject position of is likely, in violation of the locality constraint. The NP [John] is displaced from its theta position.

8. WHY??? Well one thing we can observe, is the EPP holds. (the requirement that every sentence have a subject). The NP John moves to satisfy this requirement. This doesn�t account for examples like *John is likely [that left].

9. Case Theory Case is a licenser. In order for the sentence to be grammatical, an NP must get case Nominative case is assigned in the specifier of finite TP (note: FINITE) Accusative case is assigned as the sister to the verb. These are the only two places you can get case

10. The Case Filter The case filter (a constraint that filters trees) All NPs must be in case positions (spec,TP or sister to V)

12. Raising vs. PRO John is likely to leave John is eager to leave John gets a theta role from leave John also gets a theta role from is eager! (agent) Violation of Theta Criterion??? John is eager [PRO to leave]

13. Summary of Raising Some NPs appear to be displaced from their theta assigners. This is caused by raising. Motivated by Case non-finite Infl can�t assign case NP moves to specifier of finite INFL Not all NP V [ ___ to leave] constructions are raising. Some involve PRO. it depends upon the theta properties of the main verb.

14. Passives Active [The linguist] kissed [the kitten] Agent theme Passive The kitten was kissed (by the linguist) Theme (agent) Active has agent and patient. Passive requires only a theme which is the subject

15. Passive Morphology The difference between passives and actives comes from the morphology. The addition of the passive morpheme seems to suppress the agent. kiss ? kiss+en (?kissed) agent theme theme

16. Passive Morphology The other thing the passive morphology does is suppress the verb�s ability to assign accusative case

17. An Active

18. A passive

19. Passives: A summary The passive morpheme Suppresses agent theta role Suppresses V�s ability to assign accusative case The theme NP can�t get case from the passive verb, so it moves (to the specifier of TP, where it can get nominative case.)

20. NP Movement With both raising and passives, you are moving NPs, and in both situations you do this to get case on a caseless NP. This transformation is called �NP movement� The filter that forces NP movement is the case filter.