adjective

a constituent with the feature composition: [+N, +V, –F] modifying nouns, e.g. mad in mad cow. These constituents cannot have nominal complements, their semantically nominal complement must appear as a Prepositional Phrase with the rescue strategy of of-insertion.

clause

a structure containing a (visible or invisible) subject and a predicate.

comparative form of adjectives

this form is used for comparison to a higher (or in the case of less lower) degree when two constituents are compared: He is taller than I am. This sentence contains inflectional comparative, but there is another, periphrastic way of comparison: This car is more expensive than that one.

complementary distribution

two constituents are in complementary distribution if one of them never appears in any of the environments where the other appears. If two constituents are in complementary distribution it indicates that they compete for the same structural position. E.g. we cannot have both an inflectional ending and a modal auxiliary in the same clause as these two occupy the head position within an IP, thus the ungrammaticality of *She can dances.

complementiser

a constituent introducing a sentential complement. The complementisers in English are that, if ,and for. They occupy the head position of CP and have selectional restrictions on the force and finiteness of the clause. Feature composition: [+F, –N, –V]

[±F]

one of the three basic binary features on which all categories can be defined. With the help of these features we can explain why we have the categories that we do and also describe how these categories are related. With the help of the three binary features we can predict what kinds of categories are possible in human language, we can give an exclusive list of them. [±F] is a feature used to distinguish between functional and thematic categories. [–F] categories have thematic content and [+F] categories do not. The categories with [+F] feature are the following: inflections, complementisers, determiners and degree adverbs. Certain categories are unspecified for the [±F] feature, see underspecification.

functional category

categories without lexical content, fulfilling some grammatical function in a given structure: inflections, determiners, degree adverbs and complementisers.

inflection

(a) a morpheme added to the end of words of a given category in sentence structure as required by the given structure, e.g. s in Peter like s his dog or er in Peter is clever er than Tony.

(b) the head of an Inflectional Phrase. It can be realised as a modal auxiliary or a zero agreement morpheme. Information about tense can be found in a separate vP directly under IP.

interrogative clause

a structure mainly used to ask for information, either in the form of a yes–no question or a wh-question.

intransitive verb

a verb without a nominal complement (the object), e.g. ski. Its subject is either an agent or an experiencer, i.e. one of the theta-roles assigned to the specifier of a vP. Occasionally intransitive verbs appear with a cognate object.

[±N]

one of the three basic binary features on which all categories can be defined. With the help of these features we can explain why we have the categories that we do and also describe how these categories are related. With the help of the three binary features we can predict what kinds of categories are possible in human language, we can give an exclusive list of them. Since we want to define verbs and nouns as polar opposites the abstract binary features [±N] and [±V] were introduced, though obviously they do not mean noun and verb and are used to define other categories besides nouns and verbs. A property linked to the [–N] feature is the ability to have a nominal complement. The categories with [+N] feature are the following: a. thematic: nouns, adjectives; b. functional: determiners, degree adverbs; unspecified for the [F] value: post-determiners, measure nouns.

preposition

a syntactic unit preceding its complement, the most often a DP defining a special syntactic and/or semantic relationship between the complement and another constituent: cat in the bag/grapes of wrath/tea without sugar/a reduction of taxes. Feature composition: [–F, –N, –V].

progressive aspect

the event is viewed as being in progress, e.g. I was having a bath when my sister arrived. Having a bath was an activity in progress when the other past activity happened.

subcategorisation frame

that part of the lexical entry that states the categorial status of the complement.

superlative form of adjectives

comparison to a higher (or in the case of least lower) degree when there are more than two agents involved: He is the tallest of us. The periphrastic way of forming the superlative is with the help of most: He is the most sophisticated man I have ever met.

[±V]

one of the three basic binary features on which all categories can be defined. With the help of these features we can explain why we have the categories that we do and also describe how these categories are related. With the help of the three binary features we can predict what kinds of categories are possible in human language, we can give an exclusive list of them. Since we want to define verbs and nouns as polar opposites the abstract binary features [±N] and [±V] were introduced, though obviously they do not mean noun and verb and are used to define other categories besides nouns and verbs. The categories with [±V] feature are the following: a. thematic: verbs, prepositions; b. functional: inflections, degree adverbs, aspectual auxiliaries; unspecified for the [F] value: aspectual auxiliaries, post-determiners.

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Basic English Syntax with Exercises

1.3.4.4 Prepositions

The last thematic category we will consider is prepositions. The pattern with nouns in being [–V] and with verbs in being [–N] and therefore do not share any feature with adjectives, apart from [–F] as they are both thematic.

Morphologically there is very little to say about this category as they tend to be morphologically simple and do not have inflectional forms. However, this is a property that we may use to identify an instance of the category: they are the category that do not have plural, tensed, comparative or superlative forms:

(127)with*withs*withed*wither*withest
by*bys*byed*byer*byest
to*tos*toed*toer*toest

There are a small number of exceptions to these observations. For example inner might be claimed to be a comparative form of in, ins is a possible plural (as in ins and outs) and toing is a progressive based on the preposition to (as in toing and froing). But it is obvious that in such cases the stem is not used as a preposition, but as a member of the appropriate category: in in ins is a noun, not a preposition.

In terms of the subcategorisation of prepositions, they can appear with most types of complements, including nominal ones:

(128)ait disappeared under the bridge
bit came from under the bridge
che went out

In (128a) the preposition under takes a nominal complement, demonstrating its [–N] property, in (128b) from takes a prepositional complement and in (128c) out has no complement and hence is used ‘intransitively’.

The one complement that prepositions fail to have is clausal. While verbs, nouns and adjectives can all take clausal complements beginning with the word that, it seems that this is not possible for prepositions:

(129)awe said [that we didn’t see the sign]
bour knowledge [that we were right]
cwe were anxious [that you should be told]
d*we spoke about [that you left]

It is quite mysterious why this should be, especially given the fact that all other categories seem to have no trouble in taking such complements. It is even more mysterious when we notice that prepositions can take certain clausal complements:

(130)aI thought about [whether I should leave a note]
bI haven’t seen him since [we had the argument]

In (130a) the clause is interrogative, functioning as a question, and it seems that interrogative clauses can be the complements of certain prepositions. (130b) is even more puzzling as here we have a preposition with a clausal complement without a that. Typically this word is either optional or obligatory with clausal complements:

(131)aTheodore thinks [(that) Linda left]
bmy observation [*(that) he had a missing shoe]
cI was certain [(that) no one knew about the body under the bed]

It is possible that, given the complementary distribution between words like that and since, they are of the same category and hence since is not used as a preposition in (130b). Indeed, we will see, words like that, being complementisers, are analysed as ‘functional prepositions’, given their feature specification [+F, –N, –V]. However, we will not pursue the issue here.

The following are some examples of the lexical entries of prepositions:

(132)withcategory: [–F, –N, –V]
Θ-grid:<(theme)(location)>
subcat:[nominal]
fromcategory: [–F, –N, –V]
Θ-grid:<(theme)(location)>
subcat:[nominal/prepositional]
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