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.

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:

compound noun

two nouns put together to form a single noun, e.g. homework.

constituent

a linguistic expression that functions as a unit in grammatical structure. A group of words that undergo syntactic processes together.

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.

semantics

the study of meaning. It covers both lexical meaning and the meaning of sentences with special emphasis on their truth conditions (under what circumstances a sentence is true/false).
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Basic English Syntax with Exercises

3.1.5.3 Adjunction to head

Finally, we will consider the case of adjunction to a head, using compound nouns for an example. There are a number of complexities which we will not go into here, sticking to more straightforward cases. Compound nouns are formed by putting two otherwise independent elements, usually an adjective and a noun or two nouns, together and use the resulting unit as a single noun:

(41)aarmchair
bbreastplate
cluncheon meat
dblackbird
etallboy

Sometimes the spelling indicates that the two parts of the noun are put together to form one word, but other times it does not. We will not delve into the mysteries of English spelling here. Note that when compounds are formed from an adjective and a noun, the noun is second. Moreover, if there is a main semantic element of the two parts of the compound, this is also the second element: an armchair is a kind of chair not a kind of arm. We might claim therefore that the second element is the head and the first is a modifier of the head. The structures we get are:

(42)

Given that the second noun is the head, it follows that the first element is an adjunct to the head. In principle, we should be able to get multiple head adjuncts by the same recursive process as we have noted with other adjuncts. However in practice it is not so common to find multiple compound nouns of this type. It is more common to find the adjunct itself being made up of a compound, which has a very different structure. Compare the following:

(43)acomputer hard disk
bballpoint pen

In both cases the last noun is the head, but the adjuncts are related in different ways. In (43a), the adjective hard modifies the head to form a compound hard disk. We then add the second adjunct which modifies this. Thus we have the structure:

(44)

In (43b) on the other hand, we have a compound made up of ball and point, with the latter as the head. This compound is then used as an adjunct in the compound ballpoint pen, giving the following structure:

(45)

An interesting point to note is that the adjunct to a head is always a head itself, which differs from the previous cases of adjunction we looked at above. Adjuncts adjoined to X' or XP are always phrases. It has been suggested that this is due to a restriction on adjunction such that only like elements can adjoin: heads to heads, phrases to phrases. If this is true, then X' adjunction should not be possible as the adjunct differs in its X-bar status to the X', being a phrase. We will not accept this point of view however and assume that while only heads can adjoin to heads, phrases can adjoin to any constituent larger than a head.

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