Name: Penny

Country and Region: Portland OR

Native Language: English
Student or Teacher: Student
Age or Grade: not matriculated in a program - taking a university level course
Subject of Question: Syntax
Question:
In the sentence "Samantha will not help him" what is the function of the
word "not"? Can it form a constituent with the VP "not help him"? If
not, what is it a part of?? If one drew a tree of the sentence , where
would you put "not" - what would it be the daughter of? sister?
Thank you.
Dear Penny, The answer to your first question is, broadly, "yes", but the detail
s vary, depending on which syntactic theory you subscribe to. There are a lot of
choices to make. Here we present two:
an analysis from X-Bar Theory, which is part of man of Noam Chomsky's theori
es, and
one from a more classic generative theory, that of James McCawley, author of
The Syntactic Phenomena of English (U Chicago Press, 1998).
The Chomskyan view of syntax divides sentences into lexical and functional p
arts. Lexical parts are nouns, verbs, adjectives, and prepositions-fundamental s
emantic components. Functional parts are tense, mood, negation, agreement, etc.,
and are usually expressed either by modifying the form of the lexical component
s (i.e. attaching "-ed" to make past tense verbs) or by adding auxiliary words (
i.e. adding "will" to make future verbs). "Not" is a functional component repres
enting negation. In the sentence "Samantha will not help him" "not" is a functio
nal aspect of "help", indicating a negative form of the verb. So where do we put
functional elements like "not" and "will" in the tree? Since they are essential
ly modifying the functional aspect of the main verb, it would seem appropriate t
o lump them together:
S
/ \
NP VP
/ | \
N V NP
/ | \
Sam. (will not help) him
However, this solution poses a problem for sentences like "Won't Samantha he
lp him?" "Not" and "will" retain their functional association with the verb, but
they lose their lexical proximity. This problem reflects the limitations of an
essentially lexically based tree formula. In order to deal with more complex wor
d movement, Chomskyites have developed a more sophisticated tree diagram called
X-Bar, which adds nodes (phrases) for functional categories as well as lexical.
Don't worry about the notation on this tree, just admire its crystalline formali
sm and read on.
AgrP -------- Agreement Phrase (Functional)
/ \
Samanthai Agr'
/ \
Agr TP ------- Tense Phrase (Functional)
willj / \
ti T'
/ \
T NegP ------- Negation Phrase (Functional)
tj / \
Neg'
/ \
Neg VP ---------Verb Phrase (Lexical)
not / \
NP V'
D / \
ti V NP -------- Noun Phrase (Lexical)
help D
him
The idea behind X-Bar is that each sentence begins with a Deep Structure, wh
ich consists of base lexical items and separate functional markers. The lexical
items then go through a process of checking and movement to obtain their functio
nal characteristics. This process is based on certain rules, or Parameters, of t
he particular language being spoken. The end result is the Surface Structure, or
the sentence as it would be spoken. Please note that many people think this mod
el is precious bunk.
For further introductory reading on X-Bar theory I recommend Chomsky's Unive
rsal Grammar by Vivian Cook. Its reasoning is vague, its format is confusing, an
d it is short on corroborative example. I find it an excellent introduction to t
he Chomskyan worldview.
McCawley (1998) has a whole chapter on Negation, and the question is address
ed thoroughly. In the system of that book, Negatives like not are at the top of
the tree, essentially predicating the entire rest of the clause as a complement.
McCawley's example is similar to yours, since there's a modal auxiliary and a t
ransitive verb involved. Here's the tree, from p. 571:
On the S2 cycle, Raising occurs, forming a V' constituent with the modal:
[V' can [V' speak Italian V'] V']
On the S1 cycle, Attraction-to-Tense Raising occurs, producing a more comple
x V' constituent
[V' [V' can Pres V'] [V' speak Italian V'] V']
and finally, on the S0 cycle, we have Neg-placement, yielding the final tree
:
in which not forms part of a complex V (not V', according to McCawley) const
ituent with the auxiliary can and the tense (which will of course disappear with
can). Complex V constituents are subject to considerable pruning via contractio
n: cannot and can't are examples.
Hope this helps,
John Lawler and
Chris Frost, for Ask A Linguistics Tutor
2/16/01