Suggested answer for Exercise 14

(1)	a	*The teacher from France of English likes going to open lectures.
	b	*Mary often drives too fast her car.
	c	*Every student in Cambridge of Physics gets an excellent job.

(i) The phrase that is responsible for the ungrammaticality of the sentence is the NP teacher from France of English. The noun teacher is a one-place predicate that takes the PP complement of English.

The prepositional phrase from France is not in the lexical entry of the noun. It is an optional PP, an adjunct. The problem with the NP is that the adjunct intervenes between the head and the complement. Considering X-bar theory the first rewrite rule, the Complement Rule, is applied (2). The nominal head teacher merges with its prepositional complement forming the X' level as rule 1 indicates in (2).

(2)		Rule 1:	X' ® X YP
(3)

The adjunct PP is merged with the structure by making the X' level recursive as the result of the application of Adjunct Rule as in (4).

(4)

Adjunct Rule 2:

X' ® X'  YP

After combining the rules in (2) and (4) we get the structure in (5).

(5)

There are two issues at stake here. One is that rule (2) is obligatory while rule (4) is optional. The second is that the application of rules (2) and (4) is ordered. First rule (2) must be applied. and then rule (4). In fact X-bar theory does not allow a head to be combined with an adjunct phrase. Rule 3 as in (5) is unavailable.

(6)

*X' ® X YP (where YP is interpreted as an adjunct)

The other possibility is to allow for the adjunct to be able to intervene between the head and the complement as in the NP in sentence (1a) and still maintain the rules of X-bar theory as in (2) and (4) (excluding (6)) is to allow the branches of the tree to cross. It is again impossible. Therefore X-bar theory predicts that sentence (1a) is ill formed.

(ii) Sentence (1b) is problematic for the same reason as sentence (1a). The order of the elements in the VP drives too fast her car makes the sentence ungrammatical. drive is a two-place predicate, it has a agent subject and a patient theme. The lexical entry for the verb drive:

(7)		drive	cat: [–F, –N, +V]
			Θ-grid: <agent,patient>
			subcat: nominal.

As can be seen in (7) the verb has an object complement specified in its lexical entry, but no adverbial is present in the lexical specification, therefore the adverb phrase functions as an adjunct in the VP. The order of the constituents suggests that first the head and the adjunct are merged as it is in (6), then the complement is merged with the new structure, but as we have seen in (2), this is not possible. As has been shown earlier, X-bar theory does not permit branches to cross, hence the impossibility of VP structure in (1b).

(iii) The DP subject in sentence (1c) is headed by the noun student, which is a one-place predicate. Its lexical entry is:

(8)		student	cat: [–F, +N, –V]
			Θ-grid: <theme>
			subcat: prepositional

The PP in Cambridge is not in the lexical entry of the predicate student, as it cannot be interpreted as theme; therefore it is interpreted as an adjunct in the DP. The PP of Physics can be understood as the theme of the head. In this DP the same problem arises that we had in (i). In this structure the adjunct PP is again closer to the nominal head than the complement PP, which indicates that either the head is first merged with the adjunct, then the resulting structure with the complement or alternatively the branches of the tree should be allowed to cross. Neither of these strategies available in X-bar theory as in (i) and (ii).