01:615:305 Lecture Notes - Lecture 15: Irish Language, Theta Criterion, Transformational Grammar

• School: Rutgers University
• Department: Linguistics
• Course: 01:615:305
• Professor: S E L V A N A T H A N

Document Summary

Transformation processes are based in transformational grammar (this is a theory of grammar). Over-generation problem with x-bar theory is that it generates sentences that are grammatical but make no sense syntactically. Under-generation problem with x-bar theory is that it doesn"t generate grammatical sentences. Modern irish has a vso word order and it seems impossible to draw a tree. X-bar theory is not able to generate the sentence provided in the handout but we won"t throw it out because it does account for other word orders. After a tree structure is generated, there must be movement of something in order for it to work. The lexicon a r e a s s u m i n g the following model of grammar. The sentence provided in french and english shows that the adverb position differs between the two languages. In french, it occurs after the verb, but in english it occurs before the verb.