1 Basque headedness (7 points)
Basque is a language isolate (a language unrelated to any other known languages) spoken
natively in the Basque Country, located in northeastern Spain and southwestern France.
Then,
(1) Jon -ek eskola -ra joan ohi da
Jon -eRG school -to go usually PReS
“Jon usually goes to school.”
(2) Jon -ek liburu -a irakurri du
Jon -eRG book -ABS read has
“Jon has read the book.”
- Is Basque a head-initial or a head-final language?
- Draw a tree structure for Basque sentence (1). Treat eRG and abS as determiners
2 Reasoning about ungrammaticality (15 points)
Part A: Briefly explain why each of the following English sentences is ungrammatical. Use
technical concepts from the course in your answer. I’ve given a grammatical sentence that
expresses a similar/related meaning for comparison.
(3) *Today, we chased.
(Compare: Today, we chased pigeons.)
(4) *What did we eat dinner and then we watch?
(Compare: We ate dinner and then we watched a movie.)
(5) *It appeared final exams to be canceled.
(Compare: It appeared final exams would be canceled.)
(6) *What be we will eating?
(Compare: What will we be eating?)
(7) *I hit if you knew the answer.
(Compare: I wondered if you knew the answer.)
(8) *[The US president]i saw Joei in the mirror.
(Compare: The US president saw himself in the mirror.)
4 of 8
Part B: Consider the following sentences.1
(9) a. Jani pulled the blanket over himi.
b. Jani pulled the blanket over himselfi.
(10) a. The childreni drew circles around themi.
b. The childreni drew circles around themselvesi.
(11) a. Melissa put the drink down in front of heri.
b. Melissa put the drink down in front of herselfi.
- Why is the acceptability of the (a) sentence in each pair surprising? Be specific.
(EXplain the general pattern; the reasoning is the same for each pair of examples.) - Propose a modification to a concept from this course that would help account for the
odd behavior of (a). Make sure you mention which Condition/Principle/Rule/Theory/etc you are modifying.
Sample Solution