2.1.6 Labels

There are also other phrases associated with the verb (VPs), with adjectives (APs) and indeed with every kind of word category that we have discussed (noun phrases – NPs, inflectional phrases – IPs, CPs and degree adverb phrases – DegPs).

2.3.1 Substitution

We may conclude, therefore that this part of the structure is also a phrase, presumably a noun phrase, as the word impostor is a noun. This NP is constructed of a noun followed by that just left, which as it is introduced by a complementiser we can conclude is some kind of a clause, though admittedly it doesn’t look much like a clause and a lot more needs to be said to show that it is. For now, let us just accept that it is a clause and stop our analysis at this point. What we have therefore is the following structure:

2.3.1 Substitution

We may conclude, therefore that this part of the structure is also a phrase, presumably a noun phrase, as the word impostor is a noun. This NP is constructed of a noun followed by that just left, which as it is introduced by a complementiser we can conclude is some kind of a clause, though admittedly it doesn’t look much like a clause and a lot more needs to be said to show that it is. For now, let us just accept that it is a clause and stop our analysis at this point. What we have therefore is the following structure:

2.3.1 Substitution

The NP inside the DP may also have a pronominal replacement. Consider the following:

2.3.1 Substitution

In this sentence the word one replaces robbery of a bank, which is an NP. Note that it does not replace the whole DP, as do pronouns such as it, that, him, etc. We can therefore claim that one is a pronoun which replaces NPs and hence anything that can be replaced by one is an NP.

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.

3.1.3 Heads and Complements

In this structure, off is inserted into the head position of the PP complement of the verb and as this preposition selects for a DP complement (as most of them do), only a determiner could be inserted into the head position of this phrase. The determiner would then impose restrictions on its complement, ensuring this to be an NP and hence only a noun could be inserted into the head of the determiner’s complement. Obviously, this could continue indefinitely, but in this case the process stops at this point as the noun subcategorises for no complement.

3.1.5.1 Adjunction to X-bar

The bracketed elements in (32a) and (b) have the same distribution and hence we can conclude they have the same categorial status. As this phrase in (32b) contains only a noun, we conclude that it is an NP. In (32c) however, the phrase following the determiner contains only an adjective and is ungrammatical. This clearly has a different distribution to the other two phrases, indicating that the adjective in (32a) is not the head of this phrase.

3.1.5.1 Adjunction to X-bar

The other possibility is that the adjective functions as a specifier within the NP and as specifiers precede their heads, this seems more likely. Yet there are properties of the adjective that make it an unlikely specifier. As we saw, specifiers of thematic heads tend to be arguments of those heads. The adjective is obviously not an argument of the noun as it does not bear a thematic role assigned by the noun. Furthermore, specifiers are limited to a single occurrence and there cannot be more than one of them:

3.1.5.1 Adjunction to X-bar

Thus, the adjectival modifier is an adjunct of the noun. We will argue in a later chapter that adjectival modifiers follow the specifier of the NP and hence adjectival phrases are attached in a position between the specifier and the head. As we see in the following, this puts them as adjuncts to the N':

3.1.5.2 Adjunction to phrase

We will see in a later chapter that there is reason to believe that these types of relative clause are adjoined to the NP rather than the N':

3.1.5.2 Adjunction to phrase

In this case it is the NP that is recursive, the top NP node contains the relative clause and another NP. This means that there is room for further relative clauses:

3.1.5.2 Adjunction to phrase

Again, we could keep adding NPs and relative clauses indefinitely, each relative clause adjoined to a successively higher NP. Incidentally, note that here we see that adjuncts may appear on different sides of the element that they modify. While an AP adjunct precedes the N', the relative clause follows the P.

4.1 Why the Noun is not the Head of the DP

The first consists of a determiner and a noun, which we have so far been describing as a head followed by its complement, in the usual English pattern. The second a pronoun, and we have claimed that pronouns are ‘intransitive’ determiners, i.e. determiners without an NP complement. The third consists of just a proper noun and the last just a plural count noun. These last two examples are puzzling: how can they be considered as DPs when they contain no determiner? Perhaps these are not DPs at all, but simply NPs. But if this is true, as all the examples in (1) have the same distribution, they must all be considered NPs. Thus, the pronoun should be categorised as a noun and the determiner in (1a) is not the head of the phrase, but some other element within the NP, perhaps an adjunct or a specifier (it is on the wrong side to be considered a complement).

4.1 Why the Noun is not the Head of the DP

In these cases, as in those above, the preposition does contribute something to the meaning of the phrase, though it is not clear that this should be seen as the most important aspect of the meaning of the whole phrase. Indeed London and tunnel seem to contribute just as important, if not more important information. However, it would not make sense to claim that the nouns are the heads of these phrases as they are clearly not NPs, not having the distribution of NPs:

4.1 Why the Noun is not the Head of the DP

The assumption that the determiner is not the head leads to further problems for the analysis of determiners and pronouns themselves. First consider the determiner. If this is not the head then it is presumably an adjunct or a specifier within the NP. We should therefore expect it to behave as such. Determiners do not appear to be adjoined within the NP as they do not behave like adjectival modifiers, which we have analysed as N' adjuncts in the previous chapter. Adjectives are recursive modifiers of nouns and can normally be arranged in any order, as we might expect of an adjunct:

4.1 Why the Noun is not the Head of the DP

Even if we claimed the determiner to be adjoined to the NP rather than the N', so that it would always precede AP adjuncts, which are adjoined to the N', as in (13), the non-recursiveness of determiners would remain a problem:

4.1 Why the Noun is not the Head of the DP

Of course, if we analyse pronouns as nouns, then we get a similar situation with them heading an NP:

4.1 Why the Noun is not the Head of the DP

It seems that the evidence all points to the assumption that pronouns are determiners. But, if the noun is the head of the phrase and not the determiner, how are we to analyse a phrase consisting of just a pronoun as this would appear to be an NP that lacks a noun. This brings us full circle to the observations we started with. Under the proposal that the determiner is the head, there appear to be DPs that lack determiners:

4.1 Why the Noun is not the Head of the DP

And under the proposal that nouns are the head of the phrase, there appear to be NPs that lack nouns:

4.1 Why the Noun is not the Head of the DP

Of course, the assumption of an empty category must have other motivations than just their necessity to make the analysis work. With the empty subject of an imperative we pointed out that this could act as the antecedent of a reflexive pronoun and with the trace we demonstrated how this prevents other elements from moving into a position vacated by another moved element. Is there any independent justification for either of the empty heads in (27) or (28)? If we consider the empty noun in (28), the only justification this has is to provide a head for the NP. The entire semantic content and the grammatical features of the phrase are contributed by the pronoun itself: the NP is third person singular because the pronoun is third person singular and the NP has a reference which is determined by the pronoun. Thus there is no independent support for the existence of this empty noun.

4.1 Why the Noun is not the Head of the DP

This suggests that there are two different empty determiners: one which is definite and the other indefinite. The interesting thing is that these empty determiners differ in other ways. The empty definite determiner takes only NP complements headed by proper nouns whereas the empty indefinite determiner takes only NP complements headed by plural nouns. This is perfectly normal behaviour for a head, as heads do place restrictions on their complements.

4.2.1 Determiners and Complements

We have already seen two subcategories of determiner: those which take NP complements and those which take no complement. There are also determiners which take optional NP complements:

4.2.1 Determiners and Complements

Determiners are rather boring in this respect and it seems that there are no other possibilities. This, as it turns out is very typical of functional categories as a whole, as they all have very limited complement taking abilities. However, even if the range of complements of the determiner is very limited, the arrangement of the determiner and its NP complement still conforms to the general pattern of head–complement relationships in English with the head preceding the complement:

4.2.1 Determiners and Complements

As we have seen, the determiner may impose restrictions on its NP complement, particularly in terms of number: singular determiners take singular NP complements and plural determiners take plural NP complements. Some determiners take mass NP complements, and we have seen that the empty definite determiner takes a proper NP complement:

4.2.1 Determiners and Complements

As we have pointed out, only indefinite DPs can appear in the post-verbal position in there sentences. Interestingly, in this construction the verb appears to agree with the post-verbal element. So in (36a) the post-verbal DP is indefinite, the sentence being grammatical, and the verb is in the plural form. The determiner some is an indefinite plural determiner and these properties are projected to the whole phrase. The determiner a is indefinite and singular and hence the DP that it heads can go in the post-verbal position of a there sentence and the verb will be in its singular form, as in (36b). The determiner the is definite, but unmarked for number. Therefore it cannot head a DP in the post-verbal position of a there sentence (36c), but it can trigger either singular or plural agreement on the verb when it sits in the canonical subject position, (36d) and (36e), depending on what NP it takes as a complement.

4.2.3 Adjunction within the DP

Adjunction within the DP itself is a rather limited phenomenon. We know that APs and PPs act as modifiers of nouns and adjoin within the NP, but these do not adjoin within the DP ever as can be seen by the fact that they never precede determiners or never modify pronouns:

4.3 Multiple Determiners

In general then, the structure in (63) predicts that determiners can come in any order within the DP and moreover there can be any number of them. Neither of these expectations is true. The second problem lies in the fact that this suggestion forces us to accept that determiners do not just take NP complements; they can take DP complements as well. We will see in later chapters that it is very typical of functional heads to take just one kind of complement, and no functional head takes a DP complement. DP complements seem to be restricted to thematic heads and so it is unlikely that a determiner should be able to take one.

4.3 Multiple Determiners

We can see from this that the traditional term ‘post-determiner’ is a rather misleading one as they are not determiners, nor even heads but whole adjectival phrases. Where is this AP situated? Clearly it follows the determiner and what follows the head is its complement. But determiners do not take AP, but NP complements. It must therefore be the case that post-determiners occupy a position within the NP complement of the determiner, the specifier position of the NP complement. Thus, we have the following structure:

4.3 Multiple Determiners

The only difference between pre-determiners and other determiners is that when they appear in front of a DP the pre-determiner has an optional of whereas this is obligatory with other types of determiner. The fact that we can have a post-determiner in this position is interesting. We have stated that these come in specifier of NP, but where is the NP in (67c) that the post-determiner is in the specifier of? If there is an NP in this structure the head of which cannot be seen, it seems that we are forced to assume that this head is an unpronounced empty category and therefore the structure must be something like the following:

4.3 Multiple Determiners

If this analysis can be maintained, then we can claim that pre-determiners are no different to other determiners (apart from the optionality of of) in that they may introduce a DP that has an NP complement with an empty head:

4.4 Conclusion

As far as the DP is concerned, an important observation that we have made in this chapter is that the possibilities for its complementation are very limited. Determiners take NP complements or no complements. This is typical of functional heads and contrasts strongly with thematic heads. In the next chapter this difference will be made clear.

6.1 The structure of IP

More supporting evidence for the head status of the inflection comes from its relationships to the other clausal elements. As a head we should expect the inflection to impose restrictions on its complement and specifier positions. Of course, we would not expect these to be based on Θ-roles as the inflection is a functional element and plays no role in Θ-role assignment. Instead we would expect these restrictions to be similar to those found within the DP discussed in chapter 3. Recall that determiners always take NP complements and no other phrase can appear in this position. The complement of an inflection is always a verbal phrase, be it vP or VP and again no other phrase can appear in this position. We can make this more precise if we use categorial features to describe the situation. The phrase that sits in the complement position of the inflection must be headed by an element with the categorial features [(–F), –N, +V], that is, by a non-functional verb including V and v. We can therefore suggest a very restrictive template for the lexical entries of all inflections:

7.1 The structure of CP

Another claim made in (9) is that the IP is the complement of the complementiser. Can this be substantiated? One obvious relevant observation is that the IP follows the complementiser and as we know complements follow heads in English. Thus the claim that the complementiser is the head and the IP its complement accounts for this fact about English word order without resorting to stipulation. Furthermore, we have seen that functional heads such as determiners and inflections have a very limited range of possible complements: determiners always have NP complements and inflections always have v/VP complements. The element which follows a complementiser is always an IP and so this fits the pattern very well. Finally, note that different complementisers introduce different IPs. If and that both introduce finite IPs, while for introduces a non-finite IP. As heads select for their complements, this is again an indication that the complementisers are heads selecting for different types of IP complements. This is very similar to plural determiners selecting for plural NP complements and singular determiners selecting for singular ones.

7.4.1 The position of the relative clause inside the NP

7.4.2 A comparison between relative and interrogative clauses

The relationship between the noun and the relevant position is not a direct one, however: it is not the noun which moved out of this position otherwise we would end up with a somewhat circular structure with the noun being part of the relative clause that is part of the NP headed by the noun! The relationship between the noun and the position in the relative clause is mediated by the relative pronoun: it is this element that originates in the relevant position and this pronoun is referentially dependent on the noun:

8.1.2 Clauses without IP

Besides the problem that under this analysis the head of the predicate is not the head of the clause, a major problem facing it is that it forces us to assume that the inflection can subcategorise for a whole set of different complements, ranging from DPs to PPs. But functional heads do not normally display this amount of freedom in their complement taking abilities. In all the cases we have considered so far, the agreement head selects for a v/VP complement, i.e. complements with [–N, +V] features. But if I can select for DP, AP and PP complements as well, i.e. [+F, +N, –V], [–F, +N, +V] and [–F, –N, –V], this must mean that it imposes no categorial conditions on its complement whatsoever. This is not true as bare NPs, non-thematic vPs, IPs and CPs cannot act as predicates inside small clauses:

8.3 The Gerund

In this case, the ing element behaves exactly like a noun syntactically. For example it heads a phrase which can be the complement of a determiner. As we know determiners take NP complements, so the ing element must have the category of a noun. A further fact about nouns is that their DP complements cannot be assigned case, which is why there is an of preposition inserted into the structure. With a verb, its light verb will assign Case and hence there is no need to insert of. This can be clearly seen in the different behaviours of verbs and their derived nominal counterparts:

8.3 The Gerund

Verbs head VPs not NPs and so presumably the part of the structure headed by the ing element is a VP. This is where the problems begin. Although a determiner is not possible with these elements:

8.3 The Gerund

But this cannot be correct as determiners take NP complements not VP ones. It seems that the structure needs to be ‘nominalised’ at a point above the verb, to allow it to maintain its verbal properties, but below the VP so that the structure can function as the complement of a determiner.

8.3 The Gerund

A number of consequences follow from this analysis. First, in (91a) as there is no light verb, the DP in the specifier will be Caseless and hence the preposition of will have to be inserted to salvage the structure. The presence of the light verb in (91b) renders this unnecessary as the DP will get Case in the normal way. More interestingly, the subject is present in the structure in (91b) but not in (91a). This does not mean that the subject cannot be introduced in (91a) as it is perfectly possible to have a possessive argument introduced into the NP/DP structure under normal circumstances, so there is no reason why it could not happen here. However, the point is that, as is usually the case with nouns, this will be optional and therefore the possessor/agent may or may not appear. When there is no possessor, there can be a determiner and when there is a possessor there can be no determiner, as the two are in complementary distribution: