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Save Save vdocuments. For Later. Original Title: vdocuments. Related titles. Carousel Previous Carousel Next. Carter and Mcarthy - Grammar and the spoken language. Jump to Page. Search inside document. Analyzing 1. Categories Category refers to a group of linguistic items which fulfill the same or similar functions in a particular language such as a sentence, a noun phrase or a verb.
Word-level categories Words can be grouped together into a relatively small number of classes, called syntactic categories, which can generally substitute for one another without loss of grammaticality. The glass suddenly broke. An introduction to psycholinguistics. New York: Longman. Documents Similar To vdocuments.
Yumi MeeksGiz Sawabe. Cindi Quick. Al Syarfina. Fatimah Tuzzahra. Norman Abreu Avellaneda. Bonie Jay Mateo Dacot. Dela Cruz Genesis. Elina Ekimova. Elaine Nunes. Jeedu Alotaibi. We can use the substitution technique to differentiate between comparative adjectives and adverbs ending in -er, since they have identical forms. The overall conclusion to be drawn from our discussion is that morphological evidence may sometimes be inconclusive, and has to be checked against syntactic evidence.
A useful syntactic test which can be employed is that of substitution: e. For typographical convenience, it is standard practice to use capital-letter abbreviations for categories, and so to use N for noun, V for verb, P for preposition, A for adjective and ADV for adverb. The words which belong to these five categories are traditionally said to be contentives or content words , in that they have substantive descriptive content.
However, in addition to content words languages also contain functors or function words — i. The differences between contentives and functors can be illustrated by comparing a contentive noun like car with a functional pronoun like they.
A noun like car has obvious descriptive content in that it denotes an object which typically has four wheels and an engine, and it would be easy enough to draw a picture of a typical car; by contrast, a pronoun such as they has no descriptive content e. One test of whether words have descriptive content is to see whether they have antonyms i.
This reflects the fact that nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs and prepositions typically have substantive descriptive content, and so are contentives. By contrast, a particle like infinitival to, or an auxiliary like do cf. Using rather different but equivalent terminology, we can say that contentives have substantive lexical content i. In the sections that follow, we take a closer look at the main functional categories found in English.
Items such as those bold-printed in 16 below as used there are traditionally said to be referential determiners because they determine the referential properties of the italicized noun expression which follows them : 16 a The village store is closed b This appalling behaviour has got to stop c That dog of yours is crazy Referential determiners are used to introduce referring expressions: an expression like the car in a sentence such as Shall we take the car?
Since determiners and quantifiers are positioned in front of nouns cf. The answer is that any attempt to analyse determiners or quantifiers as adjectives in English runs up against a number of serious descriptive problems. For example, adjectives can be iteratively i. Moreover, determiners, quantifiers and adjectives can be used together to modify a noun, but when they do so, any determiner or quantifier modifying the noun has to precede any adjective s modifying the noun: cf.
This provides us with clear evidence that determiners and quantifiers in English have a different categorial status from adjectives. After all, there is an obvious sense in which adjectives e. Thus, it seems appropriate to conclude that determiners and quantifiers are functional categories, and adjectives a lexical category. However, it is a pronoun in the sense that it has no descriptive content of its own, but rather takes its descriptive content from its antecedent e.
By contrast, in the examples in 22 below, the bold-printed pronoun seems to serve as a pronominal quantifier. In the first italicised occurrence in each pair of examples, it is a prenominal i. Since the relevant items can also serve in the italicised use as prenominal determiners which modify a following noun, we can refer to them as D-pronouns i. These are called personal pronouns not because they denote people the pronoun it is not normally used to denote a person , but rather because they encode the grammatical property of person.
On the nature of gender features in English, see Namai But what grammatical category do personal pronouns belong to? Studies by Postal , Abney , Longobardi and Lyons suggest that they are D-pronouns. But if this is so, it is plausible to suppose that we and you also have the categorial status of determiners i. D-pronouns in sentences like 26b. Whether or not such items are used prenominally, pronominally or in both ways is a lexical property of particular items i.
It should, however, be borne in mind that there are a number of different types of pronoun including N-pronouns, Q-pronouns and D-pronouns , so that the term pronoun does not designate a unitary category. Some linguists prefer the alternative term proform so that e. Traditional grammarians posit that there is a special class of items which once functioned simply as verbs, but in the course of the evolution of the English language have become sufficiently distinct from main verbs that they are now regarded as belonging to a different category of auxiliary conventionally abbreviated to AUX.
Auxiliaries differ from main verbs in a number of ways. Whereas a typical main verb like want may take a range of different types of complement e. As will be apparent, ought differs from other modal auxiliaries like should which take an infinitive complement in requiring use of infinitival to.
There are clear syntactic differences between auxiliaries and verbs. By contrast, typical verbs do not themselves permit inversion, but rather require what is traditionally called DO-support i. So, on the basis of these and other syntactic properties, we can conclude that auxiliaries constitute a different category from verbs. But what is the status of infinitival to? For example, they occupy a similar position within the clause: cf.
Moreover, just as should requires after it a verb in the infinitive form cf. Furthermore, infinitival to behaves like typical auxiliaries e. But what category? The general idea behind this label is that finite auxiliaries are inflected forms e. However, in work since the mid s, a somewhat different categorisation of auxiliaries and infinitival to has been adopted. As a glance at the examples in 27a-h will show, finite auxiliaries typically have two distinct forms — a present tense form, and a corresponding past tense form cf.
A plausible answer is that infinitival to carries Tense in much the same way as an auxiliary like may does. In a sentence like 37b , to is most likely to be assigned a present tense interpretation. What this suggests is that to has abstract i. The difference between them is sometimes said to be that auxiliaries carry finite tense i. Complementisers are functors in the sense that they encode particular sets of grammatical properties.
For example, complementisers encode non finiteness by virtue of the fact that they are intrinsically finite or nonfinite. More specifically, the complementisers that and if are inherently finite in the sense that they can only be used to introduce a finite clause i. Complementisers in structures like 39 serve three grammatical functions. Firstly, they mark the fact that the clause they introduce is an embedded clause i.
Secondly, they serve to indicate whether the clause they introduce is finite or nonfinite i. Thirdly, complementisers mark the force of the clause they introduce: typically, if introduces an interrogative i. For example, a clause introduced by the complementiser for can be the subject of an expression like would cause chaos, whereas a phrase introduced by the preposition for cannot: cf.
A further difference between the complementiser for and the preposition for is that the noun or pronoun expression following the preposition for or a substitute interrogative expression like who? For example, in 45 below, for functions as a preposition and the distinguished nominal Senator Megabucks functions as its complement, so that if we replace Senator Megabucks by which senator?
Hence, preposing provides a further way of differentiating between the two types of for. Furthermore, when for functions as a complementiser, the whole for-clause which it introduces can often though not always be substituted by a clause introduced by another complementiser; for example, the italicised for-clause in 47a below can be replaced by the italicised that-clause in 47b : 47 a Is it really necessary for there to be a showdown?
Consider now the question of whether the complementiser that could be analysed as a determiner. However, there is evidence against a determiner analysis of the complementiser that. Part of this is phonological in nature. The third item which we earlier suggested might function as a complementiser in English is interrogative if.
However, there are a number of reasons for rejecting this possibility. For example, whereas typical wh-adverbs can occur in finite and infinitive clauses alike, the complementiser if is restricted to introducing finite clauses — cf. An important part of doing this is to categorise each of the words in the expression. A conventional way of doing this is to use the traditional system of labelled bracketing: each word is enclosed in a pair of square brackets, and the lefthand member of each pair of brackets is given an appropriate subscript category label to indicate what category the word belongs to.
It is important to note, however, that the category labels used in 59b tell us only how the relevant words are being used in this particular sentence. For example, the N label on comments in 59b tells us that the item in question functions as a noun in this particular position in this particular sentence, but tells us nothing about the function it may have in other sentences.
So, for example, in a sentence such as: 60 The president never comments on hypothetical situations the word comments is a verb — as shown in 61 below: 61 [D The] [N president] [ADV never] [V comments] [P on] [A hypothetical] [N situations] Thus, a labelled bracket round a particular word is used to indicate the grammatical category which the word belongs to in the particular position which it occupies in the phrase or sentence in question, so allowing for the possibility that what appears to be the same word may have a different categorial status in other positions in other structures.
However, it should be pointed out that simply specifying what category a particular word in a particular sentence belongs to does not provide a full description of the grammatical properties of the relevant word. This information is generally described in terms of sets of grammatical features; by convention, features are enclosed in square brackets and often abbreviated to save space.
Each of these features comprises an attribute i. An adequate description of syntax also requires us to specify the selectional properties of individual words e. This is because different verbs select i. This in turn is because the auxiliary might selects i. In other words, a full description of the grammatical properties of words requires us to specify not only their categorial and subcategorial properties, but also their selectional properties.
It is widely assumed that the selectional properties of words can be described in terms of selectional features. For example, the fact that progressive be selects a progressive participle complement might be described by saying that it has the selectional feature [V-ing] — a notation intended to signify that it selects a complement headed by a verb carrying the -ing suffix.
As far back as his book Aspects of the Theory of Syntax, Chomsky argued that all the grammatical properties of a word including its categorial properties can be described in terms of a set of grammatical features. This analysis was designed to capture the fact that some grammatical properties extend across more than one category and so can be said to be cross-categorial.
For example, Stowell , p. Likewise, as the following example kindly provided for me by Andrew Spencer shows, in Russian nouns and adjectives inflect for case, but not verbs or prepositions: cf. Although many details remain to be worked out, it seems clear that in principle, all grammatical properties of words including their categorial properties can be described in terms of sets of grammatical features See Ramat on categories and features.
However, in order to simplify our exposition, we shall continue to make use of traditional category labels throughout much of the book, gradually introducing specific features in later chapters where some descriptive purpose is served by doing so. We then looked at a number of different types of functional category found in English. We went on to note that many linguists also take personal pronouns like he to be D-pronouns. Conversely, they are not used with do-support in any of these three constructions in Standard English: cf.
In 2a, the first to is an infinitive particle, and the second to is a preposition. Thus, the second to but not the first can be modified by the prepositional intensifier straight cf. Moreover, the second to is a contentive preposition which has the antonym from cf. Executives like to drive from work , whereas the first has no obvious antonym since it is an infinitive particle cf.
In addition, like a typical transitive preposition, the second to but not the first can be followed by an accusative pronoun complement like them — cf. Executives think the only way of getting to their offices is to drive to them.
Conversely, the first infinitival to allows ellipsis of its complement cf. Executives like to , whereas the second prepositional to does not cf.
Thus, in all relevant respects the first to behaves like an infinitive particle, whereas the second to behaves like a preposition. In 3a, for could be either a complementiser introducing the infinitival clause parents to spend time with their children , or a preposition whose complement is the noun parents. The possibility that for might be used here as a preposition is suggested by the fact that the string for parents or an interrogative counterpart like for how many parents?
The alternative possibility that for might be used as a complementiser with the infinitival clause parents to spend time with their children serving as its complement is suggested by the fact that the for-clause here could be substituted by a that-clause, as in: v It is important that parents should spend time with their children Thus, 3a is structurally ambiguous between one analysis on which for functions as a transitive preposition, and a second on which for functions as an infinitival complementiser which is irrealis in force.
Give reasons in support of your proposed categorisation, highlight any words which are not straightforward to categorise, and comment on any interesting properties of the relevant words. Are these nouns or adjectives — and how can we tell?
Since nouns used to modify other nouns are invariable in English e. However, we can use syntactic evidence. If as assumed here , the word average functions as an adjective in 1, we should expect to find that it can be modified by the kind of adverb like relatively which can be used to modify adjectives cf. In the event, both predictions are correct: ii He was feeling disappointed at only obtaining relatively average grades in the inflectional morphology exercises Some additional evidence that average can function as an adjective comes from the fact that it has the -ly adverb derivative averagely, and for some speakers at least the noun derivative averageness — cf.
Moreover like most adjectives , it can be used predicatively in sentences like His performance was average. Note, however, that in structures such as morphology exercises, you will not always find it easy to determine whether the first word is a noun or adjective. Unless there is evidence to the contrary — as with average in ii above — assume that the relevant item is a noun if it clearly functions as a noun in other uses.
We shall see that phrases and sentences are built up by a series of merger operations, each of which combines a pair of constituents together to form a larger constituent. We show how the resulting structure can be represented in terms of a tree diagram, and we look at ways of testing the structure of phrases and sentences. The resulting phrase help you seems to have verb-like rather than noun-like properties, as we see from the fact that it can occupy the same range of positions as the simple verb help, and hence e.
Much the same can be said about the semantic properties of the expression, since the phrase help you describes an act of help, not a kind of person. Using the appropriate technical terminology, we can say that the verb help is the head of the phrase help you, and hence that help you is a verb phrase: and in the same way as we abbreviate category labels like verb to V, so too we can abbreviate the category label verb phrase to VP.
If we use the traditional labelled bracketing technique to represent the category of the overall verb phrase help you and of its constituent words the verb help and the pronoun you , we can represent the structure of the resulting phrase as in 4 below: 4 [VP [V help] [PRN you]] An alternative equivalent way of representing the structure of phrases like help you is via a labelled tree diagram such as 5 below which is a bit like a family tree diagram — albeit for a small family : 5 VP V PRN help you What the tree diagram in 5 tells us is that the overall phrase help you is a verb phrase VP , and that its two constituents are the verb V help and the pronoun PRN you.
The verb help is the head of the overall phrase and so is the key word which determines the grammatical and semantic properties of the phrase help you ; introducing another technical term at this point, we can say that conversely, the VP help you is a projection of the verb help — i. The tree diagram in 5 is entirely equivalent to the labelled bracketing in 4 , in the sense that the two provide us with precisely the same information about the structure of the phrase help you.
The differences between a labelled bracketing like 4 and a tree diagram like 5 are purely notational: each category is represented by a single labelled node in a tree diagram i. In the case of 5 , the resulting phrase help you is formed by merging two words. The infinitive phrase to help you is formed by merging the infinitive particle to with the verb phrase help you. In 9 , to is the head of the TP to help you, and the complement of to is the VP help you; the head of this VP is the V help, so that to determines the form of the V help requiring it to be in the infinitive form help.
More generally, our discussion here suggests that we can build up phrases by a series of binary merger operations which combine successive pairs of constituents to form ever larger structures. For example, by merging the infinitive phrase to help you with the verb trying, we can form the even larger phrase trying to help you produced by speaker B in 10 below: 10 SPEAKER A: What are you doing?
SPEAKER B: Trying to help you The resulting phrase trying to help you is headed by the verb trying, as we see from the fact that it can be used after words like be, start or keep which select a complement headed by a verb in the -ing form cf.
If we look closely at the relevant structures, we can see that they obey the following two putatively universal constituent structure principles: 12 Headedness Principle Every syntactic structure is a projection of a head word 13 Binarity Principle Every syntactic structure is binary-branching The term syntactic structure is used here as an informal way of denoting an expression which contains two or more constituents.
For example, the structure 11 obeys the Headedness Principle 12 in that the VP help you is headed by the V help, the TP to help you is headed by the T to, and the VP trying to help you is headed by the V trying. Likewise, 11 obeys the Binarity Principle 13 in that the VP help you branches into two immediate constituents in the sense that it has two constituents immediately beneath it, namely the V help and the PRN you , the TP to help you branches into two immediate constituents the non-finite tense particle T to and the VP help you , and the VP trying to help you likewise branches into two immediate constituents the V trying and the TP to help you.
Our discussion thus leads us towards a principled account of constituent structure — i. There are several reasons for trying to uncover constituent structure principles like 12 and Moreover, additional support for the Binarity Principle comes from evidence that phonological structure is also binary, in that e. Likewise, there is evidence that morphological structure is also binary: e.
It would therefore seem that binarity is an inherent characteristic of the phonological, morphological and syntactic structure of natural languages. There is also a considerable body of empirical evidence in support of a binary-branching analysis of a range of syntactic structures in a range of languages See e.
Kayne — though much of this work is highly technical and it would not be appropriate to consider it here. By way of illustration, suppose that speaker B had used the simple single-clause sentence italicised in 14 below to reply to speaker A, rather than the phrase used by speaker B in 10 : 14 SPEAKER A: What are you doing? More particularly, the S analysis of clauses in 15 violates the Headedness Principle 12 in that the S we are trying to help you is a structure which has no head of any kind.
Likewise, the S analysis in 15 also violates the Binarity Principle 13 in that the S constituent We are trying to help you is not binary-branching but rather ternary-branching, because it branches into three immediate constituents, namely the PRN we, the T are, and the VP trying to help you. If our theory of Universal Grammar requires every syntactic structure to be a binary-branching projection of a head word, it is clear that we have to reject the S-analysis of clause structure in 15 as one which is not in keeping with UG principles.
Since are belongs to the category T of tense auxiliary, it might at first sight seem as if merging are with the verb phrase trying to help you will derive i. In what sense is Are trying to help you incomplete?
Given these assumptions, the italicised clause in 14B will have the structure 17 below: 17 TP PRN T' We T VP are V TP trying T VP to V PRN help you What this means is that a tense auxiliary like are has two projections: a smaller intermediate projection T' formed by merging are with its complement trying to help you to form the T-bar intermediate tense projection are trying to help you; and a larger maximal projection TP formed by merging the resulting T' are trying to help you with its subject we to form the TP We are trying to help you.
Saying that TP is the maximal projection of are in 17 means that it is the largest constituent headed by the auxiliary are. Why should tense auxiliaries require two different projections, one in which they merge with a following complement to form a T-bar, and another in which the resulting T-bar merges with a preceding subject to form a TP? Following a suggestion made by Chomsky , p. If we posit that all tense auxiliaries carry an [EPP] feature, it follows that any structure like that produced by speaker B in 16 above containing a tense auxiliary which does not have a subject will be ungrammatical by virtue of violating the Extended Projection Principle Rather, they function as expletive pronouns — i.
We deal with agreement in chapter 8 and so will have nothing more to say about it for the time being. An interesting implication of the analysis of clause structure we have presented here is that heads can have more than one kind of projection: e. The same is true of other types of head, as can be illustrated by the italicised expressions below: 20 a American intervention in Vietnam caused considerable controversy b She arrived at the solution quite independently of me c He has gone straight to bed d Nobody expected the film to have so dramatic an ending In 20a the noun intervention merges with its complement in Vietnam to form the intermediate projection N-bar intervention in Vietnam, and the resulting N-bar in turn merges with the adjective American to form the maximal projection NP American intervention in Vietnam.
In 20b the adverb independently merges with its complement of me to form the intermediate projection ADV-bar independently of me, and this in turn merges with the adverb quite to form the maximal projection ADVP quite independently of me. In 20c the preposition to merges with its complement bed to form the intermediate P-bar projection to bed, and this in turn merges with the adverb straight to form the maximal PP projection straight to bed.
In 20d , the determiner indefinite article an merges with its complement ending to form the intermediate D-bar projection an ending which in turn merges with the expression so dramatic to form the maximal projection DP so dramatic an ending.
In clause structures like 17 above, the pronoun we which merges with the intermediate T-bar projection are trying to help you to form the maximal TP projection We are trying to help you has the function of being the subject of the TP. Rather, the expressions which precede the head word in the examples in 20b-d seem to have the function of being modifiers of the expression that follows them — so that quite modifies independently of me, straight modifies to bed and so dramatic modifies an ending and perhaps American modifies intervention in Vietnam in 20a.
What our discussion here illustrates is that it is important to draw a distinction between the position occupied by an expression in a given structure, and its function. As we noted earlier, the preposition to merges with its noun complement bed to form the P-bar to bed which in turn is merged with the adverb straight to form the PP straight to bed. The resulting PP is then merged with the verb gone to form the VP gone straight to bed.
This in turn is merged with the present-tense auxiliary has to form the T-bar has gone straight to bed. However, although he and quite occupy the same specifier position within the expressions containing them, they have different functions: he is the subject of the T-bar expression has gone to bed, whereas straight is a modifier of the P-bar expression to bed. In much the same way, we can say that American occupies the specifier position within the Noun Phrase American intervention in Vietnam in 20a , quite occupies the specifier position within the Adverbial Phrase quite independently of me in 20b , and so dramatic occupies the specifier position within the Determiner Phrase so dramatic an ending in 20d.
The principle is violated because S-bar in 21 is analysed as a projection of the S constituent we are trying to help you, and S is clearly not a word but rather a string of words. An interesting way round the headedness problem is to suppose that the head of a clausal structure introduced by a complementiser is the complementiser itself: since this is a single word, there would then be no violation of the Headedness Principle 12 requiring every syntactic structure to be a projection of a head word.
An interesting aspect of the analyses in 17 and 24 above is that clauses and sentences are analysed as headed structures — i. In other words, just as phrases are projections of a head word e.
This enables us to arrive at a unitary analysis of the structure of phrases, clauses and sentences, in that clauses and sentences like phrases are projections of head words. A further assumption which is implicit in the analyses which we have presented here is that phrases and clauses are derived i. By saying that the structure 24 is derived in a bottom-up fashion, we mean that 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.
An alternative top-down model of syntax is presented in Phillips The tree diagrams which we use to represent syntactic structure make specific claims about how sentences are built up out of various different kinds of constituent i.
But this raises the question of how we know and how we can test whether the claims made about syntactic structure in tree diagrams are true. So far, we have relied mainly on intuition in analysing the structure of sentences — we have in effect guessed at the structure. However, it is unwise to rely on intuition in attempting to determine the structure of a given expression in a given language. For, while experienced linguists over a period of years tend to acquire fairly strong intuitions about structure, novices by contrast tend to have relatively weak, uncertain, and unreliable intuitions; moreover, even the intuitions of supposed experts may ultimately turn out to be based on little more than personal preference.
For this reason, it is more satisfactory and more accurate to regard constituent structure as having the status of a theoretical construct. That is to say, it is part of the theoretical apparatus which linguists find they need to make use of in order to explain certain data about language just as molecules, atoms and subatomic particles are constructs which physicists find they need to make use of in order to explain the nature of matter in the universe.
It is no more reasonable to rely wholly on intuition to determine syntactic structure than it would be to rely on intuition to determine molecular structure. Inevitably, then, much of the evidence for syntactic structure is of an essentially empirical character, based on the observed grammatical properties of particular types of expression. The determiner the is merged with the noun board to form the DP the board.
This DP is merged with the preposition from to form the PP from the board. The resulting PP is merged with the verb resigned to form the VP resigned from the board. This VP is then merged with the auxiliary has to form the T-bar has resigned from the board. However, a tree diagram like 26 has the status of a hypothesis i. The answer is that there are a number of standard heuristics i. One such test relates to the phenomenon of co-ordination.
We can provide a principled answer to this question in terms of constituent structure: the italicised string up the hill in 28 is a constituent of the phrase run up the hill up the hill is a prepositional phrase, in fact , and so can be co-ordinated with another similar type of prepositional phrase e. Conversely, however, the string up the phone company in 29 is not a constituent of the phrase ring up the phone company, and so cannot be co-ordinated with another similar string like up the electricity company.
Having established the constraint 30 , we can now make use of it as a way of testing the tree diagram in 26 above. Conversely, however, the fact that 31e is ungrammatical suggests that precisely as 26 claims the string chairman has resigned from the board is not a constituent, since it cannot be co-ordinated with a parallel string like company have replaced him and the constraint in 30 tells us that two string of words can only be co-ordinated if both are constituents — and more precisely, if both are constituents of the same type.
Overall, then, the co-ordination data in 31 provide empirical evidence in support of the analysis in There are a variety of other ways of testing structure, but we will not attempt to cover them all here See Radford a, pp.
However, we will briefly mention two, one of which is already familiar from earlier discussion. We can also use substitution as a way of testing whether a given string of words is a constituent or not, by seeing whether the relevant string can be replaced by or serve as the antecedent of a single word.
In this connection, consider: 32 a The chairman has resigned from the board, and he is now working for a rival company b The press say that the chairman has resigned from the board, and so he has c If the Managing Director says the chairman has resigned from the board, he must have done d If the chairman has resigned from the board which you say he has , how come his car is still in the company car park? This being so, one way we can test whether a given expression is a maximal projection or not is by seeing whether it can be preposed.
However, an important caveat which should be noted in relation to the preposing test is that particular expressions can sometimes be difficult or even impossible to prepose even though they are maximal projections. This is because there are constraints i. The answer is not clear, but may be semantic in nature. When an expression is preposed, this is in order to highlight its semantic content in some way e. What this suggests is that: 35 The smallest possible maximal projection is moved which contains the highlighted material So, if we want to highlight the semantic content of the VP give up smoking, we prepose the VP give up smoking rather than the TP to give up smoking because the VP is smaller than the TP containing it.
Why should this be? One possibility briefly hinted at in Chomsky is that there may be a constraint on movement operations to the effect that a DP can be preposed but not an NP contained within a DP, and likewise that a CP can be preposed but not a TP contained within a CP. We therefore prepose the next smallest maximal projection containing the highlighted NP king of Ruritania — namely the DP the king of Ruritania; and as the grammaticality of 36c shows, the resulting sentence is grammatical.
Hence, we prepose the next smallest maximal projection containing the TP we want to highlight, namely the CP that the FBA would assassinate the King of Ruritania — as in 36e. At first sight, this might seem to contradict our earlier statement that only maximal projections can undergo preposing. However, more careful reflection shows that there is no contradiction here: after all, the maximal projection of a head H is the largest expression headed by H; and in a sentence like I never will surrender, the largest expression headed by the verb surrender is the verb surrender itself — hence, surrender in 38 is indeed a maximal projection.
More generally, this tells us that an individual word is itself a maximal projection if it has no complement or specifier of its own. Kim and Sells, - To enable human beings to - compose and convey complex messages. Syntax is ………… for both, but it can be very interesting if it gets the process of triangle interaction between the three pillars teacher, course material and student. Thus can be generalized and applied in the study and use of a language or languages.
First, most of the syntactical rules are generated based on either confirmations or shortcomings of the traditional grammar, therefore syntacticians should gain a sufficient background about the sources of traditional grammar. Third, many new rules are formed based on the analytical and empirical analyses, therefore the practitioners of syntax should keep up with the new changes and developments in the discipline of syntax. Aden University Printing and Publishing House. Kim, J. English Syntax: An Introduction.
Center for the Study of Language and Information. Thakur, D. Linguistic Simplified Syntax. India: Bharati Bhawan Publishers and Distributors. Radford, A.
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