A SIMPLE VERSION OF GENERATIVE GRAMMAR: THE X-bar SCHEMA

The basic blueprint: head (which “projects” upwards) – specifier – complement

XP (maximal projection of X)
projections of X
SPEC X’ (intermediate projection of X)

X COMP (the comp is always sister

HEAD to the head)

NOTE: FYI – there are also “adjuncts” (which we’ll be ignoring for now)
Example (where the XP is an NP):
NP

SPEC N’
Bobby Kennedy was known as the
I am looking for the N’ ADJ
from Massachusetts
N COMP with the red cover
senator from New York
book of poems

NOTE 2: SPEC, COMP and ADJ are actually phrases too

 So, back to the basic simplified schema, here’s what N, V, P and A phrases look like under X-bar.
A couple of rules: (1) one COMP per HEAD; (2) all nodes (except for terminal ones) are binary.
NP AP

SPEC DP N’ SPEC AdvP A’

N PP A PP

the book about Chomsky quite certain about Nim

HEAD COMP HEAD COMP

PP VP

SPEC AdvP P’ SPEC AdvP V’

P NP V PP

almost in the house never overeat at the restaurant

HEAD COMP HEAD COMP

We could write a series of PS rules like so: Or we could just write two lines:
NP  (DP) N’ PP  (AdvP) P’ XP  (YP) X’ (SPEC rule)
N’  N (PP) P’  P (NP) X’  X (WP) (COMP rule)
AP  (AdvP) A’ VP  (AdvP) V’
A’  A (PP) V’  V (PP)
 A CAUTIONARY NOTE
We used to do trees like (a) although the rule was really TP  NP T VP, and the trees should have looked like (b):

(a) TP (b) TP

NP (T?) VP NP T VP

V NP V NP

People love music People pres love music

The same sort of thing is happening with trees like (c) below, which should really look like (d):

(c) VP (d) VP

(SPEC?) V’ empty SPEC V’

V NP V NP

eat a hamburger eat a hamburger

HEAD COMP HEAD COMP
(NOTE: empty nodes will come in handy later)
 The sentence itself also needs to fit the X-bar schema;
“TP” (Tense Phrase) follows the same pattern

TP
SPEC NP T’
HEAD T VP COMP

TP

NP T’

DP N’ T VP

SPEC of TP N V’

V COMP of TP

The clown past juggle

HEAD of TP
In effect, a sentence consists of a series of X-bar structures merged together:

XP1
spec1 X’1
X1 XP2
spec2 X’2
X2 XP3
spec3 X’3 EMFTREE_SIGGG0101|23|XP (spec)(X' (X)(co
XP
X3 comp spec X'
Here’s a simple example:
TP X comp
T’
he T VP
pres V’
V NP
eat N’

N
apples (Reminder: we’re ignoring adjuncts)
 AN UNEXPECTED ASIDE: THE “MERGE” OPERATION
This comes out of the Minimalist Program and it replaces PS rules; here’s a quick tour:

MERGE places pairs of lexical items together which either can or cannot be combined based on their lexical
features (these are what decide which items can be combined, and under which “label”).

NOTE: what follows is done in the “bare phrase structure” format (which replaces the X-bar format)

First, a process called “numeration” selects a series of lexical items, e.g.,: the, river, people, watch

Then, merge takes “the” and “river” and puts them together as follows (again, based on their lexical features):
the

the river (“the“ is the label and the head; “river” is the complement)

Merge now puts together the above structure with “watch”:

watch

watch the

the river (“watch” is selected as the label based on lexical features)

Merge now puts together the “watch the river” structure with the last item from numeration, “people”:

watch

people watch

watch the

the river (“watch” is selected as the label based on lexical features again)

Notice how this is the equivalent of a more familiar (well, except for that DP node) X-bar type structure:

VP watch

SPEC DP V’ SPEC people watch

V DP HEAD watch the

people watch the river the river

HEAD COMP COMP

(Did you notice how the subject DP is in the VP spec position? This is the “VP Internal Subject Hypothesis.” But we won’t mention that.)
O’Grady didn’t use bare phrase structure but ran X-bar generated structures through merge:

X-bar generates an NP (e.g., the house): NP

D N’

the house

That NP is then merged as comp to PP

a head (e.g., the preposition in):
P’

P NP

D N’

in the house

And so on, all the way up to the TP (well, eventually to the CP, but we won’t mention that)