I'm trying to draw a tree for the sentence "The government seems unable to decide whether to keep the policy" and I am getting hung up at what to call 'whether'. We were told that the sentence had empty categories, which is why I'm thinking 'whether' has to function as a complementizer preceded by an empty DP within the IP 'to keep the policy' but I'm not sure how to break the sentence down to reflect this. I know this is a complicated question but please help me if you can!
2007-04-10 06:24:42 · 1 answers · asked by Cat Loves Her Sabres 6 in Society & Culture ➔ Languages
This is a technical question that is best answered by a linguist who is a specialist in the area of linguistics about which you are inquiring. It almost sounds like the "Transformational analysis" category that Noam Chomsky has contributed much to.
If no one on this forum gives you a satisfactory answer, I would recommend submitting it to the "Ask A Linguist" website. Please see below.
http://linguistlist.org/ask-ling/index.html
They have a panel of linguists who answer linguistic questions. I know that some of them could answer your question. Good luck!
2007-04-10 20:32:41 · answer #1 · answered by Brennus 6 · 1⤊ 0⤋