Discussion Details
| Title: | A problem for believers in deep-structure? |
| Submitter: | John Harris |
| Description: | The usual starting deep structure production for generativists is
S-- NP VP. On this view, to produce a surface sentence starting with an initial PP, such as At night I wear pajamas, a speaker must first generate a deep-structure sentence with the PP internal to VP, and then perform a fronting movement of the PP from its deep structure position within the VP. How can this be considered a realistic assessment of the situation when the initial PP is very complex, as in: (1) After a hard night on the town with my buddies from the office together with a few gals from the secretary pool, I woke up this morning with a splitting headache. There is, of course, a similar problem of how it could be realistic to think that a hearer of (1) could possibly remember such a long initial PP in order to move it into an interval VP position in the deep structure version. |
| Date Posted: | 18-Nov-2004 |
| Linguistic Field(s): |
Linguistic Theories
Syntax |
| LL Issue: | 15.3231 |
| Posted: | 18-Nov-2004 |
