Foundations of Syntax:

Functional Categories
Nathaniel Torres
BBN-ANG-151
Wednesday, October 4
Functional Verbal Categories

 Not all verbs are made equal.

 There are different types of verbs cross-linguistically that add a kind of
nuance or helping function to the main verb in the sentence.
 These kinds of verbs are auxiliary verbs or modal auxiliaries.
 Consider:
 John has eaten the apple.
 John will eat the apple.
 The first sentence contains an auxiliary (or, helping verb), and the second
clause contains a modal auxiliary.
Auxiliary Verbs

 English has three auxiliary verbs: be, do and have. (Also some evidence to
suggest that get can also function as a kind of auxiliary in certain
constructions.)
 The have auxiliary occurs with the perfect tenses of English:
 John has done his chores.
 John had done his chores before his mom came home.
 The first instance of have is called the present perfect tense.
 The second instance of have is called the past perfect (pluperfect).
Auxiliary Verbs (cont.)

 The second auxiliary verb is be.

 Used with the passive voice in all tenses.
 The work was done by John.
 The bridge is being built.
 It is also used to form the progressive of English.
 John is working on his homework.
 You may see both auxiliaries appear in unison:
 The bridge had been being built before the war began.
Auxiliaries (cont.)

 The third auxiliary is do.

 Used in do-support, emphatic statements, and negation.
 Do you know where Jane has gone?
 I do know where Jane has gone.
 I don’t (do not) know where Jane has gone.
Modal Auxiliaries

 English modal auxiliaries provide information about the mood of a clause, or

in some cases, tense (English future will + infinitive).
 Mood gives some kind of nuance or attitude to a clause.
 Various kinds of mood:
 Potential: can/could
 Conditional: might/may/would
 Future: shall (this one is different from the will future in that it typically
involves a sense of desire on the part of the speaker).
 Obligation: should/must
An Aside on Mood

 There are a number of different moods found cross-linguistically and they are
not always separate words.
 Many Turkic and Uralic languages have a series of suffixes that perform the
function of the various modal auxiliaries found in English do.
 We can take Turkish and Hungarian as examples.
Mood (cont.)

 Hungarian can express three moods via suffixation: the subjunctive mood (archaic
in English), the Potential mood, and the Conditional.
 The subjunctive marker in Hungarian is –j which is subject to phonological rules
conditioning sound changes:
 Azt akarja, hogy men-j-ek az iskolába.
that want.3SG that go-SUBJ-1SG the school.
‘S/he wants me to go to school.’
 The potential suffix is given with the endings –hat/-het, subject to vowel harmony:
 Panna itt marad-hat, ameddig csak akar.
Panna here stay-POT as long as only want.3SG
‘Panna may stay here as long as she wants.’
Mood (cont.)

 The Hungarian conditional mood is expressed via the suffixes –na/-ne or –ná/-
né:
 Megcsinál-ná-m a munkát, ha több időm len-ne.
do-COND-1SG the work if more time.1SG be-COND.3SG
‘If I had more time, I would do the work.’
 We can therefore see that Hungarian makes productive use of suffixes to
convey meanings that individual words do in English.
 Let’s now take a look at Turkish.
(Some) Turkish Suffixes

 The Turkic languages provide an even larger repository of possible mood

affixes that can express entire clauses in one verb.
 There are, for example the obligative mood, the evidential mood, and the
optative mood.
 The obligative mood is given by the suffix –mAlI (vowel harmony) and
indicates what someone must do:
 O gün sınıfa git-me-meli-ydi-m.
that day class.DAT go-NEG-OBL-PERF-1SG
‘I should not have gone to class that day.’
Turkish (cont.)

 The evidential mood marker is given by the suffix –mIş and indicates a number of
things, but primarily means that something was heard second hand.
 Türkiye Hükumeti tekrar ücretler kaldır-mış.
Turkey Government.3SG again wage.PL raise-EVID
‘Apparently, the Turkish government have raised wages again.’
 Finally, the optative mood, given by –(y)A, indicates a kind of wish, or can
indicate purpose:
 Konumu göster-sin diye sana haritayı verdim.
Location.DEF.ACC show-OPT.2SG so that you.DAT map.DEF.ACC
give.PERF.1SG
‘I gave you the map so that you could show/indicate the location.’
Properties of Auxiliaries and Modals

 We have seen a good amount of typological data showcasing how different

languages employ different strategies to convey certain information.
 Now we can discuss their lexical properties and their feature inventories that
distinguish them from thematic categories (especially verbs).
 As a functional category they have a feature [+F], and they are verbal so they
are [+V] and [-N]. So, [+F, -N, +V].
 This means that, unlike thematic verbs, functional verbs do not assign theta-
roles, that is, they have no arguments.
Modals vs. Auxiliaries

 English modals occur in complementary distribution with one another, that is,
only one can ever occur in a clause.
 He may go to the store.
 But:
 *He may can go to the store.
 In contrast, auxiliaries can cooccur with ease:
 He has been working hard to finish his thesis.
 In addition to this, auxiliaries can cooccur with modals:
 He might have been working on the thesis, but I’m not sure.
Modals vs. Auxiliaries (cont.)

 That these elements can occur together in a clause is interesting because we

can clearly see that only one modal can occur in English, but a modal and
auxiliaries can appear together.
 This would imply that although they are functionally similar in that they do
not take arguments, these elements are fundamentally different semantically.
 We can summarize their difference by saying that a sentence can only ever
express one kind of modality in English, but it can express a number of
different auxiliaries, each providing information on tense and aspect (like
progressive).
Determiners

 Another functional category is determiners which is a broad class of elements

used cross-linguistically to “pick out” a noun.
 These elements are typically associated with a property called definiteness,
which means that, as a concept, they are concrete.
 This means that the noun being modified by a determiner is contextually
specific.
 Some examples of determiners include: the definite and indefinite articles,
demonstratives, and certain wh-words.
Determiners (cont.)

 In action:
 The dog
 That house
 Which book
 The use of determiners is tied to how information is introduced into a
discourse.
 One important concept to consider is bridging. Bridging is when new
information is introduced into a dialogue via an indefinite (or bare) noun
phrase. Subsequent mentions of this noun, after it has been mentioned in a
dialogue, will appear with the definite article.
Bridging and Definiteness

 Bridging can be modelled thusly:

 A dog walked into my yard yesterday. The dog then proceeded to dig holes
under my fence.
 As you can see, the new information about the dog is marked with the indefinite
article a(n) in English. When the dog is mentioned again in the discourse, it now
appears with the definite article as the person listening now knows what dog is
being talked about.
 Definiteness as a concept is specific in that it is “allergic” to certain
constructions. For example, only indefinite noun phrases can occur in existential
constructions (although colloquially, it is possible to use a definite here):
 There is a dog in my yard.
 *There is the dog in my yard.
Definiteness (cont.)

 In addition, certain determiners can only occur with certain morphological

categories.
 For example, the indefinite determiner a(n) can never occur with the plural,
but the definite determiner can.
 A dog/*a dogs
 The dog/the dogs
 So, we can see that determiners can occur with nouns, and they obviously
cannot occur with verbs, e.g., *the goes.
 This would allow us to posit a feature inventory as follows: [+F, +N, -V].
 Like the modals and the auxiliaries, determiners do not assign theta roles and
are therefore not thematic.
Adverbs

 If we think about the previous two functional categories, we can observe that
modals and auxiliaries are verbal modifiers to verbs exclusively, and
determiners are modifiers to nouns exclusively.
 Is there a category that can modify both categories? Yes, degree adverbs.
 Consider:
 Too difficult
 I read the book rather quickly.
 As these can appear with verbs and adjectives, we can posit that they have
the features [+F, +N, +V].
Complementizers

 The final functional category is complementizers.

 This is a specific category that includes words like that, if, or whether.
 These words are used to connect ideas across clauses.
 Jane knows that John is in love with Sarah.
 I don’t know whether Anna wants to come to prom with me.
 Heather waited for him to leave.
 Examples like the last one have led many syntacticians to treat
complementizers as a kind of “functional preposition,” that is, the functional
counterpart to the thematic category.
Complementizers (cont.)

 There is a typological basis for this as in the last example we can see that
even though for is a complementizer here, it is still assigning accusative case
to the subject of the embedded clause.
 Heather waited for him to leave.
 We can see that if we tried to replace him here with the nominative, the
sentence would be rendered ungrammatical:
 *Heather waited for he to leave.
 This obligatory case assignment is evidence of this dual nature of
complementizers and prepositions.
Complementizers (cont.)

 If we take these observations into account, then we can define the features of
complementizers as follows: [+F, -N, -V].
 As complementizers do not pattern with nouns, adjectives or with verbs they lack the
features associated with them.
 Finally, there are two kinds of clauses that complementizers can take: finite and non-
finite.
 Complementizers like that and if are required to take finite clauses, which means the
verb in the embedded clause must be conjugated.
 Complementizers like for are required to take non-finite clauses, which means that the
verb in the embedded clause must be an infinitive (to X).
 So:
 I know that this class is difficult./*I know that this class to be difficult.
 I waited for Anna to arrive./*I waited for Anna arrives.