I Think, You Think, He Think

I Think, You Think, He ThinkAuthor(s): John Kimball and Judith AissenSource: Linguistic Inquiry, Vol. 2, No. 2 (Spring, 1971), pp. 241-246Published by: The MIT PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4177629 .

Accessed: 15/06/2014 10:45

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

The MIT Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Linguistic Inquiry.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 195.34.79.253 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 10:45:24 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=mitpress

http://www.jstor.org/stable/4177629?origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp


SQUIBS AND DISCUSSION

The Pronominalization rule would exclude (9b), but not (7), exactly as it would exclude:

(io) *Marie li'enlevera a la petite amie de Jeani. 'Mary will steal himi from Johni's girlfriend.'

(iI) *Ili a enleve' l'enfant a la petite amie de Jeani. 'Hei stole the child from Johni's girlfriend.'

We conclude that linguistic theory must be constrained so as to disallow, at least for French,6 the selection of a grammar in which the distribution of anaphoric pronouns is determined by a rule converting full NP's to pronouns.

References

Bach, E. (1970) "Problominalization," Linguistic Inquiry i, I 2 I-I 22.

Bresnan, J. (1970) "An Argument against Pronominaliza- tion," Linguistic Inquiry I, I22-I23.

Dougherty, R. C. (I969) "An Interpretive Theory of Pro- nominal Reference," Foundations of Language 5, 488- 519.

Jackendoff, R. (I969) Some Rules of Semantic Interpretation for English, unpublished Doctoral dissertation, MIT.

Kayne, R. S. (forthcoming), The Transformational Cycle in French Syntax, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass.

Postal, P. M. (1 968) "Crossover Phenomena: A Study in the Grammar of Coreference," IBM Report, Yorktown Heights, New York.

Clitic Placement is not a cyclic rule. The ordering in the text therefore implies either that Pronominalization is not cyclic in French or that Clitic Placement is last cyclic rather than postcyclic.

6 That the same is true of English has been argued by Bach (1970), Bresnan (I 970), Dougherty (i 969), and Jackendoff (i 969).

I THINK, You THINK, HE

THINK

John Kimball, University of California at Santa Cruz

Judith Aissen, Harvard University

Verbs in English are marked in the third person singular with an /s/ suffix. There is a dialect of English, however, in which the occurrence of this suffix is optional in certain environments. In this dialect both (ia, b) are acceptable.

(i) a. Mark knows the people who Clark thinks are in the garden.

b. Mark knows the people who Clark think are in the garden.

Our hypothesis (to be spelled out below) is that the main verb of the relative clause exhibits the plural (zero) morphology under the influence of the plural head of the



242 SQUIBS AND DISCUSSION

relative clause. The data show an asymmetry, however, in that a verb which would be plural under the standard rule of agreement cannot take the singular /s/ ending when the head of the relative clause is singular. Thus, sentences like (2b) are ungrammatical.

(2) a. Mark saw the man who the girls like. b. *Mark saw the man who the girls likes.

We should like to interject some remarks concerning this dialect and its relation to standard English before proceeding with an analysis. The authors are able to accept sentences like (ib), and an informal canvass reveals that speakers most likely to agree with us in these judgments are below 25 years of age and come from Boston. Those speakers for whom (ib) is ungrammatical unanimously rate it as much better than (2b). Thus, the asymmetry between (ib) and (2b) seems to hold for all speakers, and it is one of the most interesting features of the phenomenon under consideration.

To return to the analysis, we hypothesize that the grammaticality of sentences like (i b) for certain speakers is the result of two processes of grammar, one universal and one particular to the dialect involved. The universal process accounts for the asymmetry noted above; and the particular process concerns an extension of the environment of the rule of agreement. We will look at the universal considera- tions first.

There is evidence that in the singular-nonsingular opposition, the former term is unmarked. This evidence involves matters such as frequency of occurrence, ap- pearance in position of neutralization, syncretism, and degree of morphological complexity. We do not have space in this note to detail the evidence; the reader is referred to Greenberg (I966) for an extensive discussion of the matter.

We should like to outline a proposal concerning the operation of the rule of agreement which will afford an explanation of the asymmetry mentioned above.' We propose that verbs enter phrase markers specified [u sg]. The rule of agreement changes [u sg] to [m sg] in the environment of a noun phrase which itself is marked [m sg]. As stated above, universal rules interpret [u sg] as [+ sg], and [m sg] as [- sg]. This hypothesis can be used to explain why (i b) is grammatical in the dialect being considered, while (2b) is not (respectively, why (ib) is better than (2b) in standard English). In stating the explanation, we will assume that the rule of agreement is cyclic; however, the explanation works as well if this rule is last cyclic, providing

1 Thanks to Warren Cowgill for discussion of this matter.




that it applies on the last cycle from the bottom up, as is generally the case for such rules (cf. Kimball I968).

In the relative clause of (i b) (... Clark think. ..), the verb "think" retains its [u sg] specification. On the next cycle up, however, the rule of agreement (its environment extended in a manner to be discussed below) applies optionally to place an [m sg] on "think" in agreement with the plural ([m sg]) head of the relative clause. In the relative clause of (2b) (. . . the girls like), however, the rule of agreement applies to place an [m sg] on the verb in agreement with the subject of the sentence. On the next cycle up, the head of the relative clause is marked [u sg], and the rule of agreement fails to apply. To summarize, there are four possible cases depending on whether the head of the relative clause and the subject of the relative clause are respectively singular or plural. In three of these cases the verb of the clause may take the plural morphology; these are the cases in which either NP is [m sg]. In two cases the verb must be marked for plural, namely, the cases in which the subject of the clause is [m sg], for here the rule of agreement is obligatory. The hypothesis outlined above accounts for these data.

The asymmetry between the singular and plural noted above with respect to (ib) and (2b) also holds for certain other cases of nonstandard agreement. This is seen in the contrast between (3) and (4).

(3) a. One of the men shoots craps. b. One of the men shoot craps.

(4) a. Three parts of the proposal are innocuous. b. *Three parts of the proposal is innocuous.

In the dialect in which (3b) is grammatical, which is not the same dialect as that in which (ib) is grammatical, the agreement has evidently been induced by the plural "men" , perhaps because it is the NP closest to the main verb. Notice, however, that (4b) is ungrammatical in such a dialect; i.e. the verb must be marked for plural in agreement with a plural grammatical subject even though the closest NP is singular. The asymmetry between (3b) and (4b) is exactly that observed between (ib) and (2b). This asymmetry can be explained by, and thus supports, the proposal outlined above concerning the universal mechan- ism of agreement. The difference between the dialect in which (i b) is good and that in which (3b) is good lies in the language particular matter that the environment of the rule of agreement is extended in a different way in each case.

It is interesting to note in passing that the dialect in




which (3b) is good does not necessarily include sentences like (5b), in spite of the similarity of form on surface structure.

(5) a. A friend of the men thinks that this is a ruse. b. * ?A friend of the men think that this is a ruse.

The difference, of course, is that (3b) is a partitive and (5b) a genitive construction. We will turn now to the matter of how the rule of agreement has been extended or generalized in its application to produce sentences like (ib).

Our hypothesis is that the rule of agreement in the dialect being investigated applies to NP's which are sister- adjoined to S nodes as well as NP's which are daughter- adjoined. In the relative clause construction, then, agreement may occur between the main verb of the clause and the head of the relative clause as well as between the verb and the subject of the clause. The structure of relative clauses is shown in (6).

(6) NP

NP S

NP VP

The hypothesis discussed above predicts that the nonstandard rule of agreement ought to apply also to structures like (7), which are produced by application of the rule of topicalization.

(7) s

NP S

NP VrP

This prediction is borne out by the facts, for (8b) as well as (8a) is acceptable in the dialect in question.

(8) a. These houses my uncle buys and sells. b. These houses my uncle buy and sell.

Likewise, Wh-Fronting produces a derived structure in which the NP brought forward is a sister of the matrix




sentence, and so our hypothesis would require that nonstandard agreement would be possible in such construc- tions. (Note that this rule applies before Subject-Verb Inversion.) Sentences like (9b) and (iob) are acceptable in this dialect.

(g) a. What people does Muttonhead address his words to?

b. What people do Muttonhead address his words to?

(i o) a. George wants to know what marbles the Mafia buys.

b. George wants to know what marbles the Mafia buy.

Further, the facts noted above for sentence (9) do not change when the preposition is brought forward by wh-Fronting

(i i) a. To what people does Muttonhead address his words ?

b. To what people do Muttonhead address his words ?

Finally, the form of nonstandard agreement under investigation shows up in cleft and pseudocleft sentences.

(I 2) a. Girls are what John likes to kiss. b. Girls are what John like to kiss.

(I 3) a. It is girls that John likes to kiss. b. It is girls that John like to kiss.

This is also predicted by the hypothesis formulated above, for it can be shown that both (i i) and (I2) contain some- where in their deep structure a relative clause of the form, "the ones (or, the girls), John like to kiss which ones (respectively, which girls)". The verb "like" then optionally agrees which the head of the relative clause in the way described above.

The hypothesis that the rule of agreement in the dialect in question has been extended to NP's which are sister adjoined as well as daughter-adjoined to an S node, then, correctly predicts that this form of nonstandard agreement will be exhibited by topicalized sentences, wh-questions, and cleft and pseudocleft sentences, as well as relative clauses.

There are certain aspects of the agreement phenomenon discussed above for which we have no account.

The first puzzling fact is that only verbs between the position of the relativized NP and the head of the relative clause are subject to nonstandard agreement. The sequence of sentences in (I4) illustrates this.




(I 4) a. Lucine knows the people who think that John knows (*know) the answer.

b. Lucine knows the people who John think(s) are crazy.

c. Lucine knows the people who John think(s) it is surprising to that Bill makes (*make) money.

The second fact is that when the relative clause con- tains more than one verb, the agreement with a plural head of the clause is optional for each verb, subject to the restric- tion noted above. Thus, (I5) is the collapsed form of eight sentences, all of which are acceptable in the dialect under consideration.

(I5) Where are the boys who Tom think(s) Dick believe(s) Harry expect(s) to be late?

The reader may conclude from this discussion that we have presented a set of facts which show certain anomalies. It should be remembered, however, that what we have described clearly represents a language system in the process of change; thus, it is possible that remnants from different stages are represented above, and that no coherent system has emerged. The direction of change seems clear, in that we may be witnessing in sentences like (ib) (and also (3b)) the loss of the third singular /s/ ending in English.

References Greenberg, J. (i 966) Language Universals, Mouton, The

Hague. Kimball, J. (I968) "Cyclic and Noncyclic Grammar,"

IBM Research Report, RPC 8.

THE NOMINAL IN THE

PROGRESSIVE

Dwight Bolinger, Harvard University

It is well known that the progressive tenses represent, his- torically, a combination of be with a prepositional phrase: He is working < He is on working. A trace still survives in the dialectal prefix a- of He is a-working, another in the dialectal use of after, e.g. He is after telling her, and still another in the temporal on of On assuming command he ordered a general amnesty. It has also recently been pointed out that the preposition at is still used in the standard language when an action is pronominalized:

He was working an hour ago and I guess he's still at it.

This note is to record some additional evidence for regard- ing the -ing of the progressive as an adverbial nominal;



Documents

I Think, You Think, He Think