This review guide is intended to help you organize your studying and preparation for Quiz #4 (syntax/semantics). Use lecture outline slides and data sets, your own notes, assigned readings and handouts, and past prep questions and their feedback.
The quiz will focus on topics that were discussed in class.
Some questions may ask you to think about how a rule or pattern is similar to or different from a rule or pattern that we have seen in class or in a handout. Some questions may involve data from non-standard dialects of Japanese, and you may be asked to apply and compare or modify the analysis for standard Japanese (as covered in class) to make it fit the other dialect. More generally, you may be asked to apply what you know to a new or unfamiliar situation.
1. What to expect / how to prepare
- The quiz is in class, on paper, closed-book except for your notes page (see below)
- Types of questions to expect:
- Short-answer questions drawing on basic concepts and definitions
- Small or medium-sized data set-based questions, similar to those that we have worked through in prep questions or in class
- Drawing or interpreting syntax trees
- You may prepare and bring one page of notes:
- Letter-size paper (8.5 x 11 inches) or A4, or smaller
- You may write notes on both sides of the paper
- Your notes page must be handwritten — no screenshots or scans
- If you handwrite on your device and print the result, that's okay
- Your notes page must be turned in with the quiz (it won't be graded)
- You may collaborate with classmates to prepare your notes page, but the writing on your page must be your own
2. Content covered by the quiz: Syntax/semantics
Many, though not necessarily all, of the following topics will be included on the quiz. Thematic roles (from Quiz #3) may also be included.
- Use the X' schema to draw and interpret syntax tree diagrams for Japanese phrases and sentences
- Identify the subject and predicate of a clause, and make an argument that they are phrases (not words)
- Draw structures for Japanese NP, VP, PP, IP using the X' schema
- Make generalizations about the position of heads, specifiers,
and complements within phrases
- You are only responsible for specifiers for NP and IP
- Understand these in a diagram (you will not have to draw trees with them):
- A modifier is an "extra" descriptive phrase attached at a duplicated X' level
- An embedded sentence is analyzed as a CP complement to V
- A relative clause is analyzed as an IP modifier to N
- Incorporate null pronouns (pro) into syntax trees (as category N)
- Use the X' schema to identify syntactic subjects and syntactic objects
- Understand that syntactic position, morphological case marking, and thematic role can be independent of each other
- Be able to draw trees for sentences with "double-ga" predicates
- Use syntactic analysis and X' structure to shed light on aspects of Japanese
- Identify syntactic conditions on certain honorifics
- Conditions on syntactic subject?
- Conditions on syntactic object?
- Identify the predictions of the X' schema for
constituency and c-command in Japanese sentences
- Know how the relationship between a NP and a "pronoun" like kare 'he' or kanozyo 'she' depends on c-command
- Discuss how scrambling (free word order) relates to the configurationality debate
- Describe the non-configurational alternative approach to Japanese syntax
- Given possible and impossible sentences, use concepts such as syntactic position and c-command to argue for which approach to syntax is better supported
- Identify syntactic conditions on certain honorifics
- Apply syntactic and semantic criteria to understand the topic marker -wa
- Make an argument that -wa is not a "subject" marker
- Distinguish contrastive and noncontrastive -wa based on meaning/usage and structure/distribution
- Draw syntax trees for sentences with wa-phrases