 Let us look at case assignment. I will talk little bit more about accusative case assignment and then we go to nominative case assignment and we will see the relevance of a structural relations of C command that we were discussing yesterday. So couple of preliminaries to repeat to you nominative cases are for subjects, accusative cases are for objects. In a configurational structure head positions assign cases and they assign cases to their compliments which entails that heads are case assigners, they are governors and also cases are assigned to a particular position and NPs by virtue of being in that position receives such cases. Making sense? NPs do not come with cases loaded on them inherently. However, some theoretical approach talks about such possibility as well, but we will restrict ourselves to the position that NPs do not come, do not come with cases assigned already to them. At what we can accept or as far as we can accept that probably there are all kinds of cases in NPs on only a particular kind of case gets activated in a particular position and what activates such case for example accusative in the compliments of verb that is objects and nominative in subjects is simply because they happen to be in these positions and then I will talk about, then I will talk about how we assign, how this assignment works. So let me help you draw this tree for this sentence, can you also do this when you are not book please with what you understand now how to get the structure of a sentence, please draw this structure and then we see their configurational relation. Try to try to draw the structure of this sentence in as much details as you think is possible because that helps us understand the notion of C command where I think there were some issues yesterday. So let us look at that. So we have an this is the structure of the sentence, this is subject and P here and this is I and then we get specifier of VP V bar and we have V. This sentence is this happens to be the subject of this sentence and this is the verb play. Now the wait a minute, we have an adjunct in this sentence which is what is the adjunct in this sentence in the playground is the adjunct in this sentence. So we need this structure and this becomes the complement and this becomes adjunct. So we have play and what we have as the complement is again and this is the complement. Are we good so far with this structure? Now we have an adjunct here which is specifier. Do we have this structure? Yes, everybody more than that do we understand this structure? Do you see anything contradicting anything else that you have learned so far from this structure? Does it maintain it is a simple sentence? We have not gone to a relatively complex sentence so far. This is a very simple sentence. This retains integrity of every phrase that you have learnt so far, does it? When I say integrity of a phrase what I mean is every phrase has spec head and its complement and they are related to one another by virtue of being complement to a head and then we still maintain the distinction between the complement and adjuncts of the predicate and then we maintain recursiveness, non-recursiveness and all kinds of distinctions that we have seen. We want to look at this structure today with another specific structural understanding which is we are trying to say that this head happens to assign accusative case to this NP football. We have looked at the distinction between morphological case and abstract case yesterday. I want to draw from there that the case assigned to this happens to be abstract case that is we do not see any morphological marker on this NP. If we had a pronominal NP in this position then we see some changes. However, this is an abstract case. Now, as a footnote here please remember that we see more examples of abstract cases and very few examples of morphological cases that is also because we are talking about English. May be other languages demonstrate a different pattern. In some other language we may have more examples of morphological cases and very little examples of abstract cases nonetheless that does not change our position. We are saying this assigns accusative case to this NP. We looked at two configurational relations yesterday. They were about dominance and precedence. Now, based on your understanding please tell me does this V as head precede this NP football? What we mean by precedence is structural precedence not under linear order. Does it precede the NP? Yes. Does it dominate that NP? It is crucial for us to understand. Does it dominate that NP? No. What do we need to know when we say dominate? Let me put that slide again for you to see. For a node to dominate another node it has to be higher up in the tree than the other node. May be this is higher up. If this is node A and this is node B this is higher up, but the second condition is there should be a line tracing A going downward to B. There is no line tracing this one going downward to B. In fact, if you want to go from here to B you have to go up and then down. Therefore, it is not dominating. The simple reason for this definition is just to be clear that there is no dominance relationship between this one and this one. It is only precedence. Is this clear to everybody? What dominates this one? Let us now talk about N. What are the nodes that you think dominate this N? This one is dominating this one. What else? NP, V bar, another V bar, VP and IP. Clear? This does not end up dominating this one. This is why these two configurational relations are significant. Now on the basis of this what we build is this one. Let us look at... Now we want to say not only V precedes N we want to say V C commands N. Where C commands simply means a constituent command. You know that these two terms V play an N football. These are two constituents of this sentence. Are you with me? These are the two constituents of this sentence. Yes, sure. The V play and N football are the two constituents of this sentence. To be more precise these are the two constituents of the predicate structure. Is that clear? These are the two constituents, independent constituents in that sentence. C command stands for constituent command and it helps us trace the relationship between one and the other. What we are saying now is if V assigns accusative case to this N it assigns through the notion of C command that is V C commands N football. Does this definition work in saying that V C commands football? Go ahead. I still did not understand what is C command. The thing is the whole sentence is John plays football in the ground. So you are telling that only play and football are constituent commands. No, I am saying... First of all we have not finished the whole thing to understand what that C command means. C command stands for constituent command. Like I told you there are these V and N are two constituents in this sentence. There are more constituents in this sentence. I am only giving you examples of two of them. Each constituent of a sentence is in some or the other relationship with the other constituent. The constituent that assigns case to another one that assignment takes place in the other constituent. Through the notion of C command. The constituent that assigns case to another one, this assignment takes place through the notion of C command. What is the restriction in node A C commanding node B? Through the definition that you see here of C command, do you think the node B C commands N? That is C. What I am saying is this is C command. Let us say this is A and this one is B. Does A C command B through this definition? Does it? We saw this one yesterday too where the definition says A does not dominate B and B does not dominate A. Both the conditions are met. Are we meeting these two conditions? Does A dominate B? No. B does not dominate A. No. We just talked about that. For A to dominate B, you should have a line tracing directly to that. So, I p dominates N, I bar dominates N, V p dominates N, V bar dominates N, this V bar dominates N, this N p dominates N, this N bar dominates N, but not this B. Get this? The first condition is met. What is the second condition? The first branching node dominating A also dominates B. What is the first branching node dominating A? V bar. Does it dominate B? Yes, it does. So, this condition is met. Therefore, we can say A C commands B. Now if we look at the virtue of A being a governor for B, do we meet that condition? A is a governor and A C commands B and B C commands A. Does B also C command A here? Shouldn't be too difficult for you to figure this out. It doesn't. Why? First branching node dominating B doesn't dominate A. See this thing? I saw there were some confusions yesterday and that confusion was because when we look at a simplified structure, we simplify a structure for the purpose of not leaving too many empty nodes everywhere, but that doesn't mean those nodes are not available. If you are looking at just, let me give you another one and try to remove this confusion from yesterday because I saw some people approaching me with that confusion. The confusion was we have a B P and we have B N N P and then we have play and football. See this thing? When we are talking about this N P being football, actually this N P, this football is not, football is eventually an N P, but it's a constituent of N P which is a zero level category which is a head of this N P that is N. If we leave this structure here, then it seems like in the larger B C commands N P and this C commands this one. Are you with me? Am I helping remove the confusion or am I confusing it further? Because the other reason is this two, three people who were talking about this confusion, I don't see them here. Is this helping you? Understand this? The confusion was when I said B C commands N P, if you leave this structure this way, then it also says N P C commands B because the first branching node dominating V also dominates N N P whereas actually this needs to be further elaborated and then you see that the first branching node dominating A dominates B, but the first branching node dominating B does not dominate A. Therefore A C commands B but B doesn't C command A and thus this government relationship is also met. Then we see A in this structure of I P, we see A assigning case to B with the help of this notion of C command. If this is clear, then we can move little further. People from this side. Now we can restrict this definition a little further. A governs B, yes that means this is why I said we need to restrict this further. See, what you are saying is according to the definition of C command it is okay but in order to say A governs B, both the conditions are not meeting. That is what your question is. For that we need to redefine the notion of government and this is why I am giving you this one. I have one more restricted definition of government and then the idea is not just to take you through these definitions. The idea is for you to understand that A C commands B, A case assigns B and A also governs B. Without A being a governor this assignment of case doesn't work and the reason why we want to restrict it so much is because we don't want to end up saying that any element that C commands another one also assigns case to B. See that? Now we want to look at, so it will be really very helpful to understand the assignment of nominative case if this much is clear to you so far. Now let's look at nominative cases. Which constituent in a sentence gets nominative case? Which constituent of a sentence gets nominative case? We just talked about that. Subjects get nominative case and if heads are governors and if case is assigned through the notion of C command then we need to apply the same definition to assign nominative case to the subject. Now, look at the subject here. We have this being subject and now I am putting A here or I should put something else A, B. Let me put C and then for the time being let me only put C. This is the subject and we are saying this gets nominative case. There is a problem applying the same rule for the assignment of nominative case. Do you see that problem? There is a problem saying that the same principle of case assignment assigns nominative case to the subject. Do you see the problem? Go ahead. The sentence is John plays football and John being the sentence. John being the subject. If we say a sentence like John's pen. John's pen. Subject of the sentence is John. Depends on what is the full sentence. It is a case. If you say that John's pen, it is a native case. Genitive case. That is okay. There are two NPs in that whole thing. John's and pen. John's is definitely a genitive case and then pen is something else. They are two different NPs as part of one bigger NP. Depending upon how you are going to construct the whole sentence, the assignment of case works. If you say John's pen is good, John's pen is green, what is the subject of the sentence? It is little bit difficult type of a question, but not a difficult one from the rational point of view. This sentence is just like John is a doctor. What is the subject of this sentence? John is a doctor. What is the subject of this sentence? John. John's pen is green. What is the subject of this sentence? John's pen. The whole thing becomes the subject. Now, which one gets nominative case? Which one should get nominative case? Whole phrase gets nominative case and then within that whole phrase, you have two NPs. One with the genitive case. That further substantiates our point that nominative case is related to a structural position. Nominative case is not necessarily related to an element. Point number one. Point number two, nominative cases are not assigned or for that matter in any case is not assigned to elements. It is assigned to the whole phrase. Get this thing? You can very well ask this question. Why do we need to draw this whole structure when we are only talking about one element football? You will see. I am glad you gave this example. Now, you see the John's pen, the whole NP has got nominative case. This whole NP gets accusative case. So, how the structure of that kind of sentence works? In fact, that reminds me to ask you this question. Did you get a chance to look at Lillian-Hagman's book? The case theory describing these things in Lillian-Hagman's book talks about examples like what you are asking. Now, let me go back to nominative case assignment. At least we should be able to finish that up. How does this one get nominative case? What is the head that assigns nominative case to this and how does that head assigns nominative case? It is the question that we need to address and only then we can see, we can talk about case assignment being a theoretical thing in languages. Because you understand this point that I am saying, the assignment of case as a theoretical aspect of language can only be seen when assignment of two cases are identical. The identical process is taking care of two cases. If we have components, a different module for accusative case and a different module for nominative case, then we are not really talking about theory. We are talking about patches. It becomes a theory only when several case assignments become part of one theoretical aspect. So, how do you look at this question? Look at this now, NP and tell me which head is C commanding this NP? Do you see any head C commanding this NP? No. Any head C commanding this NP? No. Anything C commanding this one? Forget about head. Any element C commanding this one? No. We are saying this gets nominative case. For this, definitely we need to do something. Now, if I say this is the head which assigns nominative case to this one. Actually, what happens is, I as a head and the feature, the particular feature of I which is being tensed. Remember this part? This host stands for tensed. The tensed feature of I, when I has tensed, what is it called? We talked about it yesterday. It becomes a, when I has tensed, it becomes a finite clause. So, the finiteness element of this head assigns nominative case to John. Inference of that is, a subject of a non-finite clause will not have nominative case. I am going to show you some examples of that, but let us very quickly look at how this works. Now, if I am saying this head I assigns nominative case to this, I is definitely not C commanding this spec. Does it? No. Given the definition and given the definition of C command that you have on a screen, it does not. However, if we modify this definition of C command little bit, then we end up saying that I M commands this NP, subject NP. And this M command does not is a modification of C command. Does it help? What is there on the screen? We need to go through that step wise. The I bar dominates I, but I bar dominates I. This I bar dominates I, but I bar does not dominate NP. That is true. Therefore, it is not in C command relationship. Now we are saying these are in M command relation with one another where we are trying to say that X that dominates A should dominate B provided that X is the maximal projection. That is a phrasal category. What is the first? All the phrasal categories like IP, VP, NP are maximal projections. Remember, there are three levels. One is a zero level, X, intermediate level, X bar and then phrasal level which is XP. All the phrasal level categories are called maximal projections. In the trick that is being played here to convert C command into M command, the trick is the first maximal projection must incorporate both of them. We are saying the first branching node, of course we are talking about the first branching node, but that first branching node should be the first maximal projection. This modification, this tweaking of this definition helps us say that this element of course does not C command, I does not C command NP, but I M commands this NP because the first maximal projection dominating I also dominates spec of this NP. Get this thing? First maximal projection dominating this I dominates this NP. Therefore, I under the notion of M command being the finite head assigns nominative case to its subject and we are doing this modification because we do not want to retain the idea that heads assign cases, heads are governor and heads assign cases under certain structural configuration. Heads do not assign case to an element arbitrarily under no relationship with one another. I bar C commands John, no, because the first branching, I bar C commands John, yes, yes you can say that, sorry, I bar C command John, but I does not C command John. X is the first branching node, what do you mean by that? What we are the reason why we are saying that X is the first branching node because we want to keep it open to define the first branching node. In this case, what is the first branching node? N bar and we want to define the first branching node in terms of M command as the maximal projection. Do you see the difference between C command and M command? In the M command the for X is the maximal projection. We just want to keep that open to account for nominative case assignment, otherwise we will have no way to account for nominative case assignments. When we say we will have no way, we will have to say something else and then the theory falls apart. So, in order to maintain theoretical integrity of heads being assigning cases and heads being assigning heads being in a position to assign case under certain configurables configurational relationship is the reason why we do this tweaking. This N P, N P M commands I and vice versa, no, you cannot say that because the first maximal projection dominating this N P is this N P. This is also a maximal projection. So, only this one M commands this because the first maximal projection dominating this I is which one? Everybody please pay attention, please look at this configuration. The first maximal projection dominating I is what? First maximal projection dominating I P and there is nothing above that I P. So, this is going to M command this one, but if you want to say this M commands this one, then the first maximal projection dominating this N P is this N P. No, no, no, no, let me finish. That is because again I did not elaborate this one. If you expand this thing John, it becomes just like football. That is N. So, let me show you this thing and this is important thing for us to understand. Do you see this N P? We just established that John's pen can also be the subject. We can have much bigger things in subject positions. Sometimes not only N P, sometimes I P's can be subjects. Those examples little later, but look at this example first. This is a spec. This is N bar and this is N and it is complement and John is here. Now, does this John M command this I? I am still trying to answer your question. You are saying, do the M command one another in a reciprocal fashion? The answer is no. I M commands John, but John does not M command I and we need to keep this restriction. Otherwise, we would not be able to say that the head governs the case assigner. Sorry, head is a case assigner and it governs the element that it assigns case to. This is all, all, all, all mathematical, all mathematical or rational gymnastics. We only want to say heads are assigners, heads are governers and they govern, they govern their case assignees and they, they assign cases under certain configurational notion. Therefore, this tweak. I am hoping that things are clear. So, these are the two things through which case assignment works. Linguistic theorist would have been happier or this theory would have looked even better if we did not have to devise the notion of C command. Sorry, notion of M command. If both assignment of nominative cases and assignment of accusative case both worked through the notion of C command, the theory would have been stronger. The fact that for the assignment of nominative case, theoreticians working with this model had to devise a new term called M command is a little bit weakness of the theory. Do you understand this, this aspect? Because we are trying to devise something, some trick just to account for one single phenomena in the sentence. And if you understand things about theory, any modification to account for one or two phenomena makes theory weaker. Nonetheless, it retains the, the components of case assignment. It takes care of this. However, it does become weak. Now, very quickly, so this becomes an assigner, this becomes a governor, this becomes a governor, this is a governor and this is a prepositions assign nominative cases, prepositions assign accusative case to its complement too. Because this NP, otherwise this NP will remain non-case assigned NP. Which NP, this NP needs a case and the assigner of case to this NP is this head. And this preposition assigns accusative case to this NP under the notion of C command. So far, we have seen just two things. C command, M command and how these two notions take care of nominative cases and accusative case. We were supposed to have covered couple of other things as well by now. But nonetheless, it is more important for us to understand how it, how it works than to cover more topics. Now, again tomorrow, tomorrow we have the last class here. I want you to, I wanted to talk about something else, some new topic tomorrow. But I want to, I do not want to bring in a new topic, new topic in syntax for tomorrow. I want you to be able to apply this, these two structural notions to account for more type of sentences. Do you see the sentence on the screen right now? For John to attack will would be surprising. Do you see the sentence? What is the subject of the sentence? Subject of the sentence is? For John to attack will. Now, is this a finite sentence or non-finite sentence? Non-finite. Finite or non-finite, this happens to be a sentence. So, the first thing that, I will talk about these things later. I just want to draw your attention to what we are going to be discussing tomorrow and what you should keep in mind. So, the first thing is, this NP does not need to be NP alone. That is, in subject position we do not have only NP's. We can also have, if we are saying this is sentence then IP. In the subject position we can have IP and once this is an IP, we have a, can we say John to attack will would be surprising? Is that a good sentence? John to attack will would be surprising? No. We need to say for John to attack will would be surprising. Why do we need this for? I mean, even a native speaker of English would not be able to answer this question because and more so because native speakers are not supposed to answer these questions. People studying this need to answer such questions. Why do we need for in this sentence? We will look at it tomorrow. One more question. Do you see, do you see sentences like the three sentences that we have below? John believes the story. Good sentence? John believes him to be a liar. What is the object of the sentence? Him to be a liar. Is that an IP? Is that a finite clause or a non-finite clause? Him to be a liar? Non-finite clause. Which means that is an IP? What is the subject of that IP? Him and him is what? Nominative case or accusative case? Accusative case. Can an accusative case marked NP be the subject of a sentence? No. That is what we have seen so far. That is true but no structure should allow a subject as anything other than nominative case. Get it? There seems to be some problem with this sentence. Then the similar kind of problem with the third sentence. I want him to learn English. Same thing, him to learn English is a non-finite clause. IP, the subject of that IP is him which happens to have accusative case. From what we know so far, accusative case marked NPs cannot be subjects of IPs. See, the reason why I am raising these issues to you is there are two reasons. It will be too much for me to expect that you will come up with these examples to counter what we have seen so far. Number one. At the same time, I want to assure that when you talk about nominative and accusative cases and there happens to be a situation when people figure out that you know how case assignment works. Someone who knows it just little bit better than you should not be able to give you this question and tell you, you do not know it completely. So, you are telling me as a parent which has memorized something that subjects get only nominative cases. I can give you an example of a subject which does not have a nominative case. How will you account for this? I do not want you to be answerless. Therefore, I am not bringing a new topic tomorrow. I will talk about little bit of these topics tomorrow so that we can wind up this whole session knowing that we understand structural relations and case theory in a way so that we understand X bar and introductory syntax properly. See you tomorrow. Thank you.