Ling 001: Linguistic Typology

Remember

• The example of inversion with auxiliaries:
• Is [the unicorn that is in the garden] t eating apples?
• In order to know which is to move to the front, we have to know the phrase structure. The linear order does not tell us.
• In the way we think about syntax, the mobile is important for movement and other syntactic phenomena, but in the end it has to have a linear order

English Phrases

• The fact that the head precedes the complement is general in English; this is called the head-initial pattern
• In other languages, as we will see later, the reverse pattern is found; these are head-final patterns
• There are sporadic examples in English in which the reverse appears to be found as well:
• Examples with notwithstanding notwithstanding, English is a head-initial language