Homework Assignment #3

This assignment is due Monday morning, February 17
 

I. For each of the pairs below, (i) explain how the 'b' example relates to the one in 'a', and (ii) draw a detailed tree of the 'b' example, including all labels and movements.

1a. MumMum destroyed this door.
1b. This door was destroyed.

2a. You attend a strange class.
2b. The strange class that you attend irritates her.

3a. She thinks that MumMum will bump into this door.
3b. Which door does she think that MumMum will bump into?


 

II. During the very first class, we saw that in English, subjects can sometimes be split into two parts, for instance:

4. The kids have all snored during the night.

This creates a problem: because of how we interpret the sentence, we know that 'all the kids' forms a meaning unit, and we know that meaning units arise from 'gluing' words together (compositionality). So these three words must have been glued together. But at the same time, 'the kids' and 'all' are separated by have and it is impossible to glue "across" another word. So these three words cannot have been glued together. Discuss how to solve this paradox.