Check this tree (please)

[Jase]

Could you check over the attached tree and let me know if I’ve made any mistakes. I’m just working through the exercises attached to chapter 7 of Carnie’s textbook. Want to finish this chapter tonight.

Danke schön!

[Jase]

Also, an Adv can function as a specifier for an AdvP, right? Could you check that I am understanding this correctly?

Teenagers drive rather quickly.
AdvP → AdvP Adv'

[tree][AdvP [AdvP [Adv' [Adv rather]]][Adv' [Adv quickly]]][/tree]

[Jase]

Then again, the rules that I have copied from X-Bar for AdvPs are:

specifier: AdvP → Adv'
adjunct: Adv' → (AdvP) Adv'
complement: Adv' → Adv (PP)

This seems to indicate to me that I need to have another level between the mother AdvP and the daughter AdvP (that is modifying the other Adv). Is this right?

[tree][AdvP [Adv' [AdvP [Adv' [Adv rather]]][Adv' [Adv quickly]]]][/tree]

[Jase]

I’m sorry for throwing these images at you, and I truly appreciate the time that you put into this forum. If I had anyone else that I could turn to with questions about these things, I would go there. I just finished GPS5 of chapter 7. Some of the things that he expects us to do were only touched on in the textbook, with no trees given to demonstrate precisely how it works. One such thing is what is in the tree attached to this post.

I understand that the embedded phrase for Maurice to quarrel with Joel is the subject of the sentence (the NP at the level of TP → NP T' [just before T' → T VP]), but I was stumped about what to do with the word for. In the end, I turned it into a complementizer and put the entire CP below the TP level (as I think is correct), assuming that for him to do something is the same as that he did something – and I know that that is a C. Could you let me know if I’ve handled this correctly?

I’ll try to keep the rest of tonight’s questions to myself until I hear back from. I would hate for you to appear on the forum and have a billion questions to answer from the likes of me! Thanks so much for your help.

[Daniel]

First post (dollar): this looks fine. Any specific questions?
(There might be some details worth considering about "for...."-- it's not a typical adjunct, so you might have some of the same complications as with double object constructions. But that's probably fine for now.)

This seems to indicate to me that I need to have another level between the mother AdvP and the daughter AdvP (that is modifying the other Adv). Is this right?

That seems reasonable to me.

Honestly, the specifier is one area that is a real mess in that book. It is first introduced as a place for determiners, then that is revoked several chapters later and the place remains. Eventually it will be the place for subjects in VPs (and other higher V-like phrases). It may also be the location for certain types of modifiers as in measure phrases for PPs ("[one foot] from the house"), but whether in this case you'd want to put it as specifier or not... probably not. So your second tree works.


Fourth post ("for..."): That works. There are some subtle distinctions in the distribution of "for" and "that", but they can both be considered C heads. (If you want to know more about the distinctions, see Rizzi 1997, "The Fine Structure of the Left Periphery" where C is split into about 5 other projections.)


Disclaimer: it's been a while since I've looked at the book in any detail, so I'm just looking over the work in general, not based on specific details of any particular chapter, etc.



Asking questions is fine! Whether we'll be able to keep up with all of them may vary, but you won't get in trouble for posting them. (Maybe not more than 10 per day or something like that )