Basic English Syntax with Exercises

constituent

2.1.5 Structural terminology

Now that we have introduced the notion of structure, we need some terms to use to refer to aspects of structures and the way we can represent them. The notion of structure entails that there are elements of a sentence that themselves are made up of other elements and indeed that these other elements may be made up of yet more elements, and so on and so on. The elements that make up a larger part of the structure are called its constituents and the constituents that directly make up a part of structure are called its immediate constituents. Thus, in a phrase such as the following, the verb and its complement phrase are its immediate constituents. Everything inside the complement phrase is a constituent of the whole phrase, though not an immediate constituent:

2.1.5 Structural terminology

Finally, it is often useful to talk about two or more nodes in a tree and their relationships to each other. For this purpose a syntactic tree is seen like a family tree with the nodes representing different family members. For some reason however, these families are made up of women only. A node which has immediate constituents is called the mother of those constituents and the constituents are its daughters. Two nodes which have the same mother are sisters.

2.1.5 Structural terminology

There is another popular way of representing structure, which we have made some use of above without comment. This is the use of brackets to represent constituents. For example, the sentence we discussed above the postwoman pestered the doctor on his birthday can be represented as follows:

2.1.5 Structural terminology

The way this works is that each constituent is surrounded by square brackets and so a constituent can be determined by finding an open bracket ‘[’ to its left and the corresponding close bracket ‘]’ to the right. Thus, the postwoman in (29) is defined as a constituent as it has an open bracket immediately to its left and a close bracket immediately to its right.

2.1.5 Structural terminology

The bracketing in (29) is not entirely equivalent to the tree diagram in (16) as in the tree the nodes have labels that tell us what they represent, phrases or sentences. We can add labels to brackets to make the two representations equivalent. With bracketing, the label is usually placed on the open bracket of the constituent:

2.3.1 Substitution

As we claimed, the distribution of an element shows us that it has a certain status in the sentence and all elements which have the same distribution will have the same status. This is why we could use observations about distribution to demonstrate the structure of the sentence: the fact that the bull has the same distribution as it shows that the bull is a constituent, specifically a DP as, as argued above, pronouns are determiners. Furthermore, the fact that worried the china-shop owner has the same distribution as charged shows that the former is also a constituent, specifically a VP as charge is a verb. In other words, we can use distributional observations such as these to test the structure of any sentence: for any part of the sentence, if we find it distributes like some element that we know what its categorial status is, then we can assume that that part of the sentence has the same status as that element.

2.3.1 Substitution

This shows us that the string of words, under his mitre forms a constituent of the sentence, but the category of this constituent is not so easy to determine from the category of its replacement. We might suppose that there is a pronoun and therefore it replaces DPs, but this constituent is made up of a preposition (under) followed by a DP (his mitre) which does not distribute like a DP:

2.3.1 Substitution

85b) is ungrammatical if we take under his mitre to name what it is that is being hidden, equivalent to a gun in (78) (though it is grammatical with the interpretation that it names the place where the bishop was hiding! In this case it does not function as the object and hence is not distributing like one). We called this kind of constituent a prepositional phrase above and we will continue to assume this and therefore we can conclude that there is in fact a pronominal preposition phrase as this is what it seems to replace.

2.3.1 Substitution

Thus, besides being a general predicative pronoun, so can also be a clausal pronoun. Like other pronouns, then, it can provide us with evidence as to what counts as a constituent in a sentence.

2.3.2 Movement

Obviously, such movement processes determine aspects of the distribution of an element: an element which can be moved from one position to another must be able to occupy both positions. Turning this the other way round, something which moves has a certain distribution and we know that anything that has a distribution is a constituent.

2.3.2 Movement

It therefore follows that anything that moves is a constituent, and we can use movement phenomena to test assumptions about the structure of a sentence. For example, the movement involved in topicalising the object in (98) can be taken as support that the object is a constituent of this sentence.

2.3.2 Movement

Not every kind of phrase can be questioned in this way, however. For example, there is no wh-element that corresponds to a VP, nor one for an NP. However the fact remains that only constituents can undergo this movement and so it can act as a fairly reliable test for the constituent structure of most parts of a sentence.

2.3.2 Movement

It is important to note that only one constituent can undergo any particular movement and that two constituents cannot move together. To demonstrate this, consider the following sentence:

2.3.2 Movement

This sentence can be interpreted in one of two ways depending on who is seen as having the gun. If it is the bank manager who has the gun, then the PP with the gun acts as a modifier within the DP the bank manager with the gun. If, on the other hand, the bishop has the gun, then the PP is interpreted as modifying the VP killed the bank manager with the gun. In the first interpretation the PP is a kind of locative modifier, locating the gun with the bank manager and in the second it is an instrumental modifier saying what was used to kill the bank manager. The important point to note is that in the first case the PP forms a single constituent with the DP, whereas in the second it is a separate constituent from this. Thus we have the two structures:

2.3.2 Movement

This sentence is no longer ambiguous between the two meanings. This is because we must interpret the moved element as a single constituent and not as two separate constituents that have been moved together. The same point can be made with the movement of wh-elements, as shown by the following:

2.3.3 Coordination

Just like in the case of movement, only constituents may be coordinated and two independent constituents cannot act as one single conjunction which is coordinated with another. To demonstrate this, recall the ambiguous sentence in (104) where the PP was either associated with the object DP or with the VP. Now, if we coordinate the string of words, the bank manager with the gun with the DP the security guard, the ambiguity is resolved:

2.3.3 Coordination

In this example two DP objects are coordinated, one the bank manager with the gun and the other the security guard. The first conjunct cannot be interpreted as a separate DP with following PP modifying the VP as this would not constitute a single constituent which could be coordinated with the second DP.

2.3.3 Coordination

By the same token, two constituents with the same function can be coordinated, even if they do not have the same categorial status:

3.1.1 Rewrite rules and some terminology

Recall from chapter 2, rewrite rules which tell us how structures of various kinds decompose into their constituent parts. The rules in (1) are like these, only far more general. The generality is achieved through the use of category variables, X and Y, which stand for any possible category (nouns, verbs, prepositions, determiners, etc.). Thus these rules tell us how phrases in general are structured, not how particular VPs, PPs or DPs are.

3.1.1 Rewrite rules and some terminology

Note that, although these are constituents of different types, they all have a very similar pattern: the head is on the left and the complement is on the right. This is exactly what the X-bar rules were proposed to account for. It is clearly the case that there are cross-categorial generalisations to be made and if constituents were described by the rewrite rules of the kind given in chapter 2, where for each type of constituent there is a specific rule, it would be impossible to capture obvious similarities between phrases.

3.1.1 Rewrite rules and some terminology

Again there are several things to note about this structure. Once more, there are two immediate constituents of the phrase. The specifier, a phrase of any category, precedes the X', the constituent just discussed containing the head and the complement. Again the ordering of these two constituents is language dependent: specifiers precede X's in English, but this is not necessarily so in all languages. Specifiers are a little more difficult to exemplify than complements due to complications that we have yet to discuss. However, the following are fairly straightforward cases:

3.1.1 Rewrite rules and some terminology

Above the head, we have the X', the first projection of the head. The bar then indicates the projection level of the constituent: X' is one projection level above X0.

3.1.5 Adjuncts

This is different from the previous two rules in a number of ways. First, the previous rules specified the possible constituents of the various specific projections of the head: complements are immediate constituents of X' and specifiers are immediate constituents of XP. The adjunction rule in (30) is more general as it states the possible constituents of an Xn, that is, an X with any number of bars. In other words, Xn stands for XP (=X''), X' or X (=X0). The adjunct itself is defined either as a word (Y) or as a phrase (YP) and we will see that which of these is relevant depends on the status of Xn: if Xn is a word, then the adjunct is a word, if not then the adjunct is a phrase.

3.1.5.3 Adjunction to head

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.

3.2.1 Move α

Finally in (50d) we see another kind of movement which appears to split a constituent across the structure. The preposition phrase for the new car park, is clearly related to the noun plans. Indeed, this PP is the complement of the noun:

3.2.2.1 D-structure and Theta Theory

A D-structure principle may then require a constituent X to occupy a certain position and an S-structure principle may require X to occupy a certain position, and if these two positions are not the same then X will have to move from its D-structure position to the required S-structure position. Thus, explaining movement is a matter of finding out the principles which determine the distribution of elements at D- and S-structure.

5.2.7 Phrasal verbs

Much of this evidence seems to suggest that the preposition does not act as the head of a preposition phrase, but forms a unit with the verb. For example, while (124a) shows that the PP complement of a verb can be moved to the front of the clause, it seems that the particle plus the following DP cannot be moved (124b), indicating that it is perhaps not a constituent. Moreover, as we have seen in (125a) a PP can be modified by an adverb like right, but this is not possible for the particle followed by a DP (125b). Finally, we can coordinate a PP complement with another PP (126a), but we cannot coordinate the particle plus the following DP with a PP, indicating that the particle does not form a PP with the following DP. For this reason, it is often claimed that the particle forms a syntactic unit with the verb, perhaps being adjoined to it:

7.1 The structure of CP

These words form a constituent with the following IP, but are not part of its structure. So, the clause can be moved along with its complementiser, the clause and its complementiser can be replaced by a pronoun and the clause and its complementiser can be coordinated with another such string:

7.1 The structure of CP

In (2a) the clausal complement of the verb know has obviously moved from its normal complement position behind the verb to a position at the front of the sentence. As the complementiser still precedes this clause, it can be assumed to form a constituent with it. In (2b) the pronoun it is used to replace the clause that Stan saved the world. As this includes both the complementiser and the IP, we conclude that these must form a constituent. Finally, in (2c) two clauses are coordinated. That both clauses begin with a complementiser demonstrates that the complementiser forms a constituent with the following IP.

7.4.1 The position of the relative clause inside the NP

Both kinds of relative clauses can be coordinated with other like constituents showing that they both form a constituent with the noun that they modify. But only the restrictive relative clause and its noun can be pronominalised by one. A possible explanation for this is that one only pronominalises N's and the string consisting of a noun and a non-restrictive clause is not an N'. This suggests that while restrictive relatives adjoin to the N', non-restrictive relatives adjoin higher up, perhaps to the NP:

8.1.1 Clauses without CP

Recall from chapter 6 that the notion of government, which is relevant for Case assignment, imposes a restriction on what can be governed in that an element can govern ‘up to a point’. We left undefined what that point was in our previous discussion, but now it is important to be more precise. There are a number of ways that we might think of doing this, but one of the most intuitive is to suppose that certain nodes in a tree form barriers to government in that they ‘protect’ their constituents from government from the outside. Thus a governor may be able to govern up to a barrier, but not through a barrier. We know that a light verb can assign Case to the specifier of the VP, as this is the normal configuration in which accusative Case is assigned: