Basic English Syntax with Exercises

Suggested Answers for Check Questions

The constituent that is not projected in a phrase is called the head (the zero-level projection). A head projects its properties (e.g. its category), thus the maximal projection containing that head will share the category of the head and so will intermediate projections between the two. Projection is sharing category among the three levels of constituents. The properties of a given head which is inserted into a head position are idiosyncratic, in other words, if a word is picked from the lexicon, all the relevant pieces of information about it specified in the lexicon are also automatically available. Thus, depending on what category a given word has, the phrase it heads will acquire the same category.