Overview
Instructions
This assignment was inspired by Part 9 of Problem Set 1.1 (pp. 31-2) of Syntax: Theory and Problems (1993) by Donna Jo Napoli, Oxford University Press.
Submit your answers to the following questions.
- What part of speech is poor in the following sentence? Provide as many pieces of grammatical evidence as you can supporting your answer:
- The Bible says it is easier for a poor person to get into Heaven than it is for a rich person to do so.
- Now consider poor in the following sentence. What part of speech is it?
- The poor are defenseless.
- It seems like there are two main options here. It is either an adjective or a noun. Both provide challenges. First, apply as many of our adjective and noun grammatical tests as you can and decide which one it is.
- If you conclude it is a noun, what kind of noun would it have to be? Provide evidence for your answer. Is it regular or irregular? Few Ns are irregular. If you conclude it is an irregular noun, are you missing something? Consider the following example:
Here are all the books the new dean sent. Let’s arrange them in her office by color, okay? The blue go on the top shelf. The red go on the bottom shelf. And let’s put the purple on the in-between shelves.
What do blue, red, and purple suggest in this sentence?
- If you conclude that poor is still an adjective in 2, we are faced with a different challenge. Explain what would be difficult about drawing the tree structure for Sentence 2 if poor is an adjective.
- Recall it must be Handwritten (either on paper or on a tablet)