LING2001 Lecture Notes - Lecture 14: Phrase Structure Rules, English Language In England, Language Acquisition
Thursday, 13 April 2017
LECTURE 14
X-BAR THEORY 2
-X-bar theory
•Introduction
-Tests such as ‘one’ replacement and conjunction point to a more complex structure than
we had assumed so far
-Need for intermediate levels between phrase and head levels
-Intermediate levels appear to be motivated by evidence for all types of phrases (NP, VP,
AdjP, PP)
-Enables complements and adjuncts to be distinguished in our tree representations
•Complements sister to the head
•Adjuncts sister to a bar level
•We can generalise over our rules a, as patterns are similar:
-XP > (YP) X’
•(YP) = Optional specifier
-X’ > (ZP) X’ or X’ (ZP)
•Adjunct rule can be iterated - as many times as there are adjuncts
•Note: ‘or’ has exclusive meaning - trees have binary branching now
-You can have both an AdjP and a PP in one given NP
-X’ > X (WP)
•Complement rule with the head
-(to be refined/revised)
-X-Bar: distinction between adjunct and complement
•Complements are closest to head
•Adjuncts never come between head and complement
•So there are two types of PPs, although surface structure is similar
-“The book of poems”
-“The book with a yellow cover”
!1
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Thursday, 13 April 2017
-“The book of poems with a yellow cover”
•PPs with ‘of’ not ‘to’ are most often complements
-Complement
•X’ > X (WP)
•PP is a ‘sister’ to N
•PP seems to ‘complete’ the meaning of the noun
-Tells us what kind of book is being referred to
-“of poems” is a complement
•Closest to head
•Specifier in phrase is the determiner
-Adjunct
•X’ > X’ (ZP)
•PP is a ‘sister’ to N’
•Seems more optional, more loosely related to the NP
•Related to a projection of the head but not the head directly
-Complement and adjunct
•So we have:
-Complement rule: X’ > X (WP)
-Adjunct rule: X’ > X’ (ZP)
•Rules show that:
-As Comp Rule introduces a head (X), the complement PP will always be closer to it than
the adjunct, which is next to a X’ node
•“The book of poems with a yellow cover” / *”The book with a yellow cover of poems”
•The two N’s can be replaced by ‘one’:
-“The one”
-“The one with a yellow cover”
•Can N be replaced by one?
!2
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Thursday, 13 April 2017
-?”The one of poems with a yellow cover”
•Depends on dialects; If there is a difference it may be useful for distinguishing between
complement and adjunct
-If we isolate a head and its complement, we tend to isolate them together
-Recursion: adjuncts
•Adjuncts can be added indefinitely:
-“The book of poems with a yellow cover from UWA
Press by Jones”
•Only one complement is allowed here
-*“The book of poems of stories with a yellow cover”
-Complements and adjuncts: different constituents
•Complements and adjunct are constituents of a different type
-Sister of X vs sister of X’
-Cannot conjoin elements at a different bar level
•“The book of poems and of stories from UWA Press”
•*”The book of poems and from UWA Press”
-Complement and adjunct cannot be conjoined
•Adjuncts can also be reordered, but complements cannot be reordered with adjuncts
-Complements must be next to the head
-Complements and adjuncts in VPs, AdjPs, AdvPs and PPs
•Distinction not limited to NPs
-Holds for all the major syntactic categories
• Timmy fears [sheep] [intensely] [for no good reason].
V DO adv PP
comp adjunct adjunct
-DO must be adjacent to V and there can only be one
•*Timmy fears intensely sheep for no good reason
!3
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