Current mood:

gloomy

Dormitive Syntax
Three days left to study for the syntax exam. I do not understand anything in syntax. Fortunately nor does anyone else in the class, nor our teachers, nor any linguist. Unfortunately merely stating this in lieu of answers is not an efficient strategy for the exam. This morning I spread out all my notes and notes on notes and notes about notes and sat down to make notes on them. Then I stared out of the window and went to write this.

The announcer said of Karita Mattila that on this disc she sang songs "by Grieg and her compatriot Sibelius", and I thought strongly that Grieg wasn't female -- nor indeed a compatriot of Sibelius, but that perhaps required a deeper search of general knowledge, as I didn't instantly register that. But the pronoun violation was instant. Clearly, "by Grieg and by her compatriot Sibelius" is unambiguously correct and I know why, but why does the pronoun "her" within a single PP "by [X and her Y]" clamour for an antecedent within it? After all, pronouns don't usually prefer the nearest possible antecedent: that's determined pragmatically. In "Jenny heard Susan's story about her brother" I don't think there's any preference for whose brother it is. "Jenny told Susan about her exam", "Jenny complained to Susan about her exam", "Jenny informed Susan about her exam" -- no preference in the first, pragmatically chosen in the others.

"Jenny saw Susan naked" -- "Jenny watched Susan naked" -- "Jenny looked at Susan naked" -- With a preposition present the adjective can no longer qualify the object: why? But you can with what's misnamed Heavy Shift because in this case there's nowhere else it could have got shifted from: "Jenny looked at Susan naked and struggling with the tentacled monster". No wait, that's explained by parallelism, not heaviness: try "Jenny looked at Susan naked as the day she was born", which, dangnabbit, doesn't work. Unless you whack in a comma. Then it does, but it's extrapolation. But of what? Where's the normal place for an adjective qualifying the object? "Jenny looked at the naked Susan", with a determiner!?

"Me doing this exam seems pointless" -- "My doing this exam seems pointless" -- The subject can get genitive case by being a qualifier of the nominalized verb. But how does it get accusative? My lecturer admitted it was unknown and didn't even try to suggest a theory.

How am I expected to remember how to apply ECP and the θ-Criterion and λ-abstraction and A-movement feeding A'-movement, if there are all these holes, nuts, whatever they are? Oh you can explain them with dormitive virtues: prepositions have a feature [+NotAllowedToDoThis] that's a barrier to Adjective Complementation Somethingorotherization.

Perfect Syntax, Elegant Syntax, Flexible Syntax, well my theory's Dormitive Syntax. I was reading about the endoplasmic reticulum the other day and thinking that's so messily biological, it reminds me of syntax. Are we anywhere remotely near understanding it? I mean anyone, not just me?