Summer LING-102, 2007
Instructor: Marjorie Pak
July 25, 2007
Homework 4. Due Monday, July 30, at 10am. Part of the homework will be handwritten and turned in to me in class; the other part will be emailed to me before class. See below for exact instructions. Part I. As we noted in class, there are still some vestiges of V2 in modern English. We talked about V2 in sentences that begin with negative elements like never, not in a million years, etc.; but V2 is also found in a much more common context mentioned earlier in your handout namely, wh-questions. When we ask a direct question with a wh-phrase (who, what, where, which x, how many x, etc.), we (i) (ii) move the wh-phrase to the beginning of the sentence; and move the auxiliary verb to the position before the subject (the V2 position).
These two movements are shown with arrows in the following tree (the italicized t stands for trace; its just used to indicate where each moved constituent started out): Which ship will Vader fly?
Now consider the following sentence: 1) Which ship will Vader need to fly? This sentence is structurally ambiguous. You may not see the ambiguity right away. If youre having trouble, insert the words in order before the infinitive to fly; this will give you the so-called purpose infinitive reading, where the infinitive is modifying the verb phrase containing need. (On the other reading, the infinitive is interpreted as the object (or complement) of the verb need; well call this the complement infinitive reading.) Draw two trees for the sentence in (1), referring to your class handout if necessary. Indicate which tree has the purpose-infinitive reading and which has the complement-infinitive reading, and write an unambiguous paraphrase for each tree. Include arrows showing the movement of the noun phrase which ship and the auxiliary will in both trees, as illustrated in the example above.
Part II. Infinitives marked with to go all the way back to Old English. In Middle English, it was fairly common for infinitives to be marked with for as well (so-called for-marked infinitives). Here are some examples: 2) [he] went...into Naples for to conqwere it (Capgraves Chronicle, 1420-1500,112.2473)
3) the beastlich mon...secheth for to fallen in this put the beastly man tries for to fall in this pit
The beastly man tries to fall into this pit. (Ancrene Riwle, 1225-1230, 1,II.48.447) On the paper you drew your trees on, answer the following questions: a) Which of the sentences above, (2) or (3), (probably) contains a complement infinitive? b) Which contains a purpose infinitive? Bring your answers to Parts I-II to class on Monday to hand to in me directly. Part III. For to infinitives survive in some dialects of present-day English, including Irish English, Scottish English, Ozark English, Ottawa Valley English, and Tyneside English. You may recognize them from folksongs as well (Im going to Louisiana / my Susanna for to see; Swing low sweet chariot / coming for to carry me home; etc..). I used the Penn-Helsinki Parsed Corpora of Middle English and Early Modern English (www.ling.upenn.edu/hist-corpora) to investigate two questions: (i) (ii) What was the frequency of for-marking in infinitives throughout Middle English (1150-1500) and Early Modern English (1500-1710)? What portion of for-marked infinitives were purpose infinitives in each period?
Here are my raw results: Period 1150-1250 1250-1350 1350-1420 1420-1500 1500-1570 1570-1640 1640-1710 Total infinitives 2353 1200 5250 2234 7671 9780 9296 For-marked infinitives 384 317 1312 357 255 172 176 For-marked purpose infinitives 272 133 553 164 49 21 7
Use spreadsheet software to draw a graph that answers questions (i)-(ii) above. Remember that the table here shows raw data only, so youll need to start by calculating frequencies. Experiment with different types of graphs, axis arrangements, etc., until youve settled on a format that you think does the best job of showing what happened with for-to infinitives in the history of English. Perhaps youll decide that the information is best presented in two separate graphs. Make sure your final version is clearly labeled and easy to interpret. Write a short paragraph that provides an answer to questions (i...