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.

adjective phrase (AP)

a phrase headed by an adjective. In the complement position we can find PPs and finite and non-finite CPs. DPs and exceptional clauses are excluded since adjectives are not Case assigners. APs are complements of DegPs.

adjunction

a type of movement where a new position is formed as a result of the movement creating an adjunction structure, like the (simplified) movement of the PP in the following tree structure representation where the S node is doubled:

arguments

the participants minimally involved in an action defined by the predicate. The complements and the subject, the latter also called an external argument.

daughter

an immediate constituent of a node which then is the mother node.

determiner

the head of a Determiner Phrase, a closed class item taking an NP complement defining its definiteness. Feature composition: [+F, –N, +V]

distribution

the set of positions that the grammar determines to be possible for a given category. Words that distribute in the same way will belong to the same categories, words that distribute differently will belong to different categories.

mother

a node directly above another node.

noun phrase (NP)

a phrase headed by a noun. Noun heads can take PP or CP complements, DP complements are excluded since nouns are not Case assigners. The specifier position of an NP is occupied by what are generally called post-determiners. NPs are complements of DPs.

phrase

a group of words that can undergo syntactic operations (e.g. movement) as a unit.

recursive rule

a rule where the definition refers to what is being defined, e.g. the adjunct rule. The same symbol appears on the left and on the right of the rewrite rule, so the rule can be applied indefinitely. The application of such a rule is optional for this reason.

specifier position

a position defined by X-bar Theory. The specifier is sister to X', daughter of XP. It is a phrasal position, the nature of the phrase depends on what it is the specifier of. E.g. the specifier of IP is the subject, the specifier of DP is the possessor in possessive structures.

theta role

the semantic role of the participants as required by the predicate. E.g. verbs define what kind of semantic relationship is to be established between the verb itself and the arguments of the verb, and arguments are selected accordingly. The verb kick calls for an agent subject, so its subject position cannot be occupied by e.g. my CD-player.

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Basic English Syntax with Exercises

3.1.5.1 Adjunction to X-bar

Let us take an example to demonstrate how this might work. We know that an adjectival phrase can be used to modify a noun, as in:

(31)asmart student
bvicious dog
cserious mistake

It is clear that the noun is the head of this construction as it can act as the complement of a determiner and determiners take nominal complements, not adjectival ones:

(32)athe [NP serious error]
bthe [NP error]
c*the [AP serious]

The bracketed elements in (32a) and (b) have the same distribution and hence we can conclude they have the same categorial status. As this phrase in (32b) contains only a noun, we conclude that it is an NP. In (32c) however, the phrase following the determiner contains only an adjective and is ungrammatical. This clearly has a different distribution to the other two phrases, indicating that the adjective in (32a) is not the head of this phrase.

It is also possible to conclude that the adjective is not a complement of the head noun as it does not follow the noun and as we have seen, in English, all complements follow their heads.

The other possibility is that the adjective functions as a specifier within the NP and as specifiers precede their heads, this seems more likely. Yet there are properties of the adjective that make it an unlikely specifier. As we saw, specifiers of thematic heads tend to be arguments of those heads. The adjective is obviously not an argument of the noun as it does not bear a thematic role assigned by the noun. Furthermore, specifiers are limited to a single occurrence and there cannot be more than one of them:

(33)athe letter arrived
bthe postman arrived
c*the letter the postman arrived

However, there can be more than one adjectival modifier of a noun:

(34)apopular smart student
bbig evil vicious dog
csolitary disastrous unforgivable serious mistake

Thus, the adjectival modifier is an adjunct of the noun. We will argue in a later chapter that adjectival modifiers follow the specifier of the NP and hence adjectival phrases are attached in a position between the specifier and the head. As we see in the following, this puts them as adjuncts to the N':

(35)

The part of the structure containing the AP is recursive with an N' as the mother and an N' as one of the daughters. This means that there is room for more APs, as demonstrated by (36):

(36)

This could go on indefinitely with each adjunct introducing an N' which itself contains an adjunct and another N' and hence any number of adjuncts could be added to the structure, which appears to be the correct treatment of adjuncts.

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