PHRASES
Merging - “combining” two words together; simplest
way of forming a phrase
Head - the key word which determines the
grammatical and semantic properties of the phrase
Projection – when a unit is projected into a larger
structure by merging it with another constituent of an
appropriate kind
EXAMPLE:
VP “Help you” is a projection of V “Help”
“The head of a projection/phrase determines the
grammatical properties of its complement.”
Traditional labelled bracketing technique – to represent
the category of the overall phrase and of its
constituent (component) words
Labelled tree diagram - an alternative (equivalent) way
of representing the structure of phrases
TREE DIAGRAM vs LABELLED BRACKETING
- the two provide us with precisely the same
information about the structure of the phrase
- each category is represented by a single labelled
node in a tree diagram (i.e. by a point in the tree which
carries a category label like VP, V or PRN), but by a pair
of labelled brackets in a labelled bracketing
Binary merger operation – combines two constituents
together to form a larger constituent
Selectional Properties – in this claim is the assumption
that different words have different selectional
properties which determine the range of complements
which they can take
“The head of a projection/phrase determines the
grammatical properties of the head word of its
complement.”
Recursion – the property of allowing a given structure
to contain more than one instance of a given category
Terminal node – one at the foot/bottom of a tree
Nonterminal node – one which branches down into
other nodes
Headedness Principle
Every nonterminal node in a syntactic structure is a
projection of a head word
Binarity Principle
Every nonterminal node in a syntactic structure is
binary-branching
CLAUSES
Clauses - a unit of grammatical organization next below the
sentence in rank and in traditional grammar said to consist
of a subject and predicate
Tense Projection/ Tense Phrase/ TP
Headedness Principle - requires every nonterminal node in
a tree to be a projection of a head word
Binarity Principle – binary branching
Intermediate Projection – is a constituent which is larger
than a word, but smaller than a phrase
Maximal Projection – a constituent which is not contained
within any larger constituent with the same head
Extended Projection Principle (EPP) - which specified that a
finite tense constituent T must be extended into a TP
projection containing a subject
Expletive Pronouns -pronouns with no intrinsic meaning
which are used to satisfy the syntactic requirement for a
finite auxiliary like was/has to have a subject
Complementisers - is a lexical category that includes those
words that can be used to turn a clause into the subject or
object of a sentence (that, for and if)
CP/Complementiser Projection/Complementiser Phrase
Phrases and Sentences derived in a Bottom-up Fashion -
lower parts of the structure nearer the bottom of the tree
are formed before higher parts of the structure nearer the
top of the tree
TESTING STRUCTURE
Constituent – a string of words that functions as a unit, they
are present in hierarchical structures (i.e. tree phrase
structure)
Co-ordination Condition - English and other languages have
a variety of co-ordinating conjunctions like and/but/or
which can be used to co-ordinate (= conjoin = join together)
expressions
*we can’t just co-ordinate any random set of strings
Substitution Test - the assumption underlying this test is
that a string of words is a constituent if it can be substituted
by a single word
Proforms – is a function word that can stand ‘in place of’
some other expression
Preposing Test - the core assumption underlying this test is
that only a string of words forming a constituent can be
preposed (and thereby moved to the front of the structure
containing it) in order to highlight it in some way (e.g. in
order to mark it out as a topic containing familiar/old
information, or as a focused constituent containing
unfamiliar/new information)
*When an expression is preposed, this is in order to
highlight its semantic content in some way (e.g. for
purposes of contrast – as in e.g. ‘Syntax, I don’t like but
phonology I do’).
*It may be that infinitival to has no intrinsic lexical semantic
content, and that this makes an infinitival to-phrase an
unsuitable candidate for highlighting. If so, this suggests
that when preposing material for highlighting purposes, we
should prepose as few words as possible.
*DP (Determiner Phrase) can be preposed, but not an NP
(Noun Phrase) contained within a DP
*CP (Complement Phrase) can be preposed, but not a TP
(Tense Phrase) contained within a CP
Economy Condition - syntactic structures should contain as
few words as possible, and syntactic operations should
affect as few words as possible
Preposing Condition - when material is preposed in order to
highlight it, what is preposed is the smallest possible
maximal projection containing the highlighted material
Funtional Head Constraint - the complement of a certain
type of functional head F (such as a determiner or
complementiser) cannot be moved on its own (without also
moving F)
*We cannot prepose a constituent which is the complement
of a complementiser
If an expression can be preposed in order to highlight it, it
is a maximal projection; if it cannot, this may either be
because it is not a maximal projection, or because (even
though it is a maximal projection) a syntactic constraint of
some kind prevents it from being preposed, or because its
head word has insufficient semantic content to make it a
suitable candidate for highlighting.
STRUCTURAL RELATIONS AND THE SYNTAX OF
POLARITY ITEMS
Tree diagrams are referred to in earlier technical work
as Phrase-markers or P-markers because they
represent how to form phrases of various types.
P-marker – a graph comprising a set of points
connected by branches representing containment
relations (which constituents contain or are contained
within which other constituents)
Root – the topmost node in any tree structure
Constituent-command or c-command – provides us
with a useful way of determining the relative position
of two different constituents within the same tree
“A constituent X c-commands its sister constituent Y
and any constituent Z which is contained within Y”
Polarity item – a lexical item that can appear only in
environments associated with a particular
grammatical polarity/property
These are items which have an inherent ‘polarity’ in
the sense that they are restricted to occurring in
certain types of sentence.
Polarity Condition
A polarity item must be c-commanded by an affective
(e.g. negative, interrogative, or conditional)
constituent.