2.1.4 Structural positions

The notion of structure helps us to define grammatical positions more easily. As we saw previously grammatical positions cannot be defined in terms of linear order. The verb, for example, might be the second, the third or indeed the n^th element in a sentence, and yet there is still a definite position for the verb which no other element can occupy. Once we have introduced the notion of structure, however, we can see that the verb occupies the same structural position no matter what else is present in the clause.

Consider the following structures:

Notice that in all these structures the verb occupies the same position inside the second phrase of the sentence. It would not matter how many words or other phrases the first phrase contained, the verb would still be in the same position with respect to its own phrase, and hence grammatical position defined in terms of structure is much more satisfactory than in terms of linear order. Moreover, if we consider the structure of the phrase that the verb appears in, we can identify its position within this phrase more easily than by counting its position in a linear string:

Again, we cannot identify the position of the verb within the phrase in terms of linear order, but in terms of the structure it is clear that the verb always comes directly underneath this phrase, precedes its phrasal complements and may follow adverbial modifiers. As we proceed it will become even clearer that there is a unique structural position that verbs and verbs alone can occupy.