adjunct

a constituent not selected by a head.

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:

D(eep)-structure

the structure before movement takes place, a representation of thematic relations.

preposing

the movement of PPs, VPs, negative expressions to the beginning of the sentence: Under no circumstances would I read another novel by him.

preposition phrase (PP)

a phrase headed by a preposition. It usually takes a DP complement but certain types of CPs can also appear in the complement position of PPs. PPs themselves can be complements of different constituents such as verbs, nouns and adjectives.

S(urface)-structure

post-movement structure containing the traces of moved constituents.

topic

an element appearing in front of the subject with a special interpretation (something like ‘as far as topic is concerned’). Topics have either already been mentioned before in a conversation or can be interpreted as easily accessible due to the context.

verb phrase (VP)

a phrase headed by a verb. It is in the VP together with the vp(s) that the basic argument structure of the clause is formed, thus, theta-role assignment takes place here. The specifier position of the VP is occupied by the constituent bearing the theme/patient theta role. In passive structures this constituent has to move from the specifier position of the verb to the specifier position of IP in order to get Case. A VP can have different types of complements such as a DP, CP, IP, PP.

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Basic English Syntax with Exercises

3.2.2 D-structure and S-structure

An immediate consequence of accepting movements as a part of grammatical description is that there are at least two levels that we can describe the structure of any sentence: a level before movement takes place and a level after movement has taken place.

(59)structure
↓
movement
↓
structure

The difference between the two levels of structural description will simply be the positions that the moved elements occupy, given the above assumption that movements do not actually alter the structure. For example, consider the following two sentences:

(60)aMary met Mark in the park
bin the park, Mary met Mark

In (60a) the PP in the park is an adjunct to the VP, modifying the VP by adding information about where the meeting took place. In (60b) the PP has moved to the front of the sentence, in a similar way to that in which topics are moved to the front. We can call this movement preposing. Before the preposing takes place, the PP is in its VP adjoined position:

(61)

After the movement, the structure will look like this:

(62)

We call the structure before movement takes place, a D-structure and the post-movement structure an S-structure. The ‘D’ and the ‘S’ originally stood for deep and surface, reflecting the fact that S-structures represent an ordering of the elements which is closer to that which holds in the externalisation of the sentence (its pronunciation, or whatever) while D-structures represent an abstract level of description more deeply embedded in the analysis. However, the words deep and surface have unfortunate connotations which may lead to misunderstanding. Deep, for example, can be taken to mean ‘meaningful’ or ‘ponderous’, while surface can mean ‘superficial’ or ‘apparent’. It would be wrong however to come to the conclusion that deep-structure is somehow more important or that surface-structure is irrelevant. These terms should be taken simply as referring to the two levels of the description of a sentence and neither one nor the other is any more important than the other. This is why the more neutral terms D-structure and S-structure are used and we will follow this tradition.

 

 

                 3.2.2.1 D-structure and Theta Theory

                 3.2.2.2 S-structure and Case Theory

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