Rules of Sentence Structure

The following relation were found to play an important role in syntactic

structures. There are many complications, but at their core, they are quite
simple.

Relation 1: Mother / daughters / sisters

A constituent that immediately dominates (is above)

another is called its mother; the immediately
dominated constituent is called a daughter.
Daughters of the same mother are called sisters.

Relation 2: C-command. A sister c-commands its sister(s) and everything inside

it / them.

Relation 3: Binding. A constituent binds another constituent if it c-commands it,

and both refer to the same entity.

The NP John binds the Prn he,

and the NP Mary binds the Prn
her. The subscripts indicate
reference to the same entity; the
technical term is co-reference.

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Relation 4: Principle A – for anaphors (reflexives and reciprocals)

An anaphor must be bound in the same

sentence S: The Prn herself can – and in
fact must – be bound by the NP the girl in
the sentence to the left, and cannot be bound by that NP in the tree to the left.

Relation 5: Principle B – for ordinary – non-anaphoric – pronouns

A pronoun must not be bound in the

same sentence S: The Prn her cannot
be bound by the NP the woman, which
c-commands it and is in the same
sentence.

Her can be bound by the NP the girl

which is in the “higher” S, but it does
not have to. It can also refer to some
third female entity.

Co-reference with a c-
commanding constituent is
possible as long as it is not
in the same S!
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Relation 6: Principle C – for referential NPs

A referential NP cannot be bound

anywhere at all: Neither NP in the tree
to the right can be co-referential with
any of the pronouns, even though these
are in different Ss.

In the tree to the left,

neither can the NP Ivanka
refer to the same person as
the Prn she or the NP the
president’s wife, nor can
the NP the president refer
to the Prn he or the NP
Donald Trump.

In this final
tree, you
can see that
the absence
of c-
command
changes
everything.

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No c-command, no binding, and now even two referential NPs such as the
president and Donald Trump can refer to the same person.

Similarly, the NP John can refer to the same person as the Prn he, which would
not be possible if the Prn c-commanded the NP.

Relation 7: Negative Polarity Items (NPIs). Negation followed by ever, any, etc.

As we can see in this sentence as well as

in many other example sentences, the
polarity items ever and any are c-com-
manded by the negative element none of
them.

So here, too, c-command seems to play an important role. But there is a nagging
question. In all the “good” example sentences such as

 No hunters found any deer

 The hunters didn’t find any deer
 None of them ever saw any deer

the negative element precedes the polarity items. Shouldn’t that be enough as
description – why also bring in c-command?

Tinkering with another example sentence will give us the answer:

In the first of the two

sentences to the left, there
are two negative
elements, didn’t, which
both precede the polarity
element anyone.
Which one of these is the
important one? It turns out
that it is the didn’t that both
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precedes AND c-commands anyone, as the second sentence is just
ungrammatical.

Once more it turns out that the c-command relation plays a crucial role in
important phenomena.