I. Well-formedness - well-formed sentences can serve to generate (specify how to form) grammatical sentences

This boy must seem incredibly stupid to that girl.

* Rules discovered:

S NP M VP

VP V AP PP

AP AdvP A

PP P NP

NP D N

II. Lexicon – people’s knowledge of words

1. Categorical information - words stored in your brain have syntactic category specified

This boy must seem incredibly stupid to that girl

This girl must seem incredibly stupid to that girl Any word can replace these nouns

This man must seem incredibly stupid to that chap

Boy: N girl: N must: M seem: V

(we must know to which categories the words belong to know how and where to use them)

1. Subcategorisation frame – information what may precede and follow the word

Rely: categorical information [v]

Subcateg. frame [NP-NP]: I rely on John

Admire: categorical information [v]

Subcateg. Frame [NP-NP]: John admires Mary

1. Selectional restrictions – semantic/pragmatic restriction on the choice of expressions from a given category (e.g nouns) which can occupy a given sentence-position

Murder: categorical information [v]

Subcateg. Frame [NP-NP]

Selection restrictions <human-human> <subject-object>

1. Thematic-roles – each subject and complement of a verb bears a particular thematic role (theta-role). Thematic-roles help explain similarity between different uses of the same lexical item.

• Agent - instigator of the action (John killed Bill)

• Patient – entity undergoing action (Mary fell over)

• Experiencer – entity experiencing (John was happy)

• Benefactive – entity benefiting (He gave flowers to Mary)

• Instrument – means by which sth happened (He killed Mary with a knife)

• Locative – place (He put it under the bed)

• Goal – entity towards which sth moves (He passed the book to Mary)

• Source – entity from which sth moves (He returned from Paris)

John opened the door with a hammer

(agent) (patient) (instrument)

Kill: categorical information [v]

Subcat. Frame [NP-NP]

Sel. Restr <human-human>

Theta-grid: Agent, Patient

III. theta-marked subjects

Like: categorical info. [v]

Subcateg. Frame [NP-NP]

Sel. Restr [alive]

Theta-grid [experiencer, benefactive]

• John tried to understand the problem +

• My cat tried to escape +

• Your kettle is trying to boil over –

• Your theory is trying to prove right –

• There is trying to be a misunderstanding –

• It is trying to be likely that he will come –

the verb ‘try’ poses restriction on the subject – it has to be rational, so it assigns the subject theta-role of agent

• John seemed to understand the problem +

• My cat seems to have escaped +

• Your kettle seems to be boiling over +

• Your theory seems to prove right +

• There seems to be a misunderstanding +

• It seems to be likely that he will come +

the verb ‘seem’ poses no restriction on the subject, it takes nonthematic subject (the one to which it assigns no theta-role)