September 20, 2011

Department of English Eng 502: The Grammar of English Instructor: Dr J. Arko ______________________________________________________________________________ PS RULES AND THE X-BAR SCHEMATA We could describe English syntax by listing a set of linear form class patterns for all possible syntactic sequences in English. But hundreds of such sentences will be necessary for such an effort, and cannot account for hierarchical constituent structure Tree diagrams may be employed to represent every possible constituent structure in English in this quest. But this will not result in fewer trees and more economical representation of English constituent structure. But there is a recurrent pattern within the tree diagrams which indicates that every sentence consists of an NP and a VP, and that the NP may either contain only a noun or a noun and some determiners. Also every VP consists of a verb and some variant of be. The idea of Phrase Structure rules (PS rules) is to make general statements about constituent structure more explicitly, comprehensively and more briefly. PS rules might be thought of as a set of directions for drawing constituent structure tree diagrams. The arrow used in PS rules mean that what is on the left side of the arrow can have as Immediate Constituents what is on the right side of the arrow. The PS rule expresses once and for all that the inventory of linear forms and tree diagrams do repeatedly. The sentence description provided by the PS diagram is provided when the need arises. That is why the term generative is used to apply to them; because they generate structures rather than store them. PS rules play a central role in the description of English syntax. By generating constituent structure trees they adequately describe hierarchical groupings in the sentence structures and they do so with maximum simplicity because it makes it possible to generalise about sentence structure, and apply the generalisations to the descriptions of individual words. PS rules make it reasonable to suppose that humans with finite memories produce sentences by applying general principles rather than memorising thousands of constituent structures. THE X-BAR THEORY The X-bar schemata is nothing more than a formal statement of generalisations abstracted from PS Rules. The PS rules recognises that words are combined into phrases and phrases into sentences. The basic intuition in the X-bar theory is that Phrasal structures follow the same schemata and therefore can be simply be expressed in a unified scheme: VP -- . . . V . . . NP -- ...N.... AP -- . . .A . . . PP -- . . . .P . . . . Read from right to left, these rules encode the generalisation that the structural representation of every category includes a phrasal level constituent, i.e. XP. Lets call the phrasal level constituent, the XP, the maximal projection (of X). Every XP has an X as an obligatory constituent, which we may call the Head of the maximal projection. This core property of PS rules can be captured in terms of the following schemata: Page | 1

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XP -

...X....

HEADS, SPECIFIERS AND COMPLEMENTS One of the shortcomings of PS rules is that they do not reflect structurally the distinction between subcategorised and non sub-categorised categories. Phrase markers consist in : (a) Heads. Phrases are built around a nucleus called the Head. (b) Specifiers: (i) They help to make the meaning of the Head more specific. (ii) They typically mark the phrase boundary (iii) They differ depending on the category of the Head (c) Complements: These elements provide information about entities and locations whose existence is implied by the meaning of the Head. For example the phrase the solution to the problem has the following elements: (a) Head solution (b) Specifier the (c) Complement to the problem This information may be represented in a tree diagram as: NP

Det (Spec) the

N (Head) solution

PP (Complement) to the problem

It seems here that both the PP and the Det are sisters to the Head, and therefore to each other. This is not exactly correct. Specifiers and Complements are expected to have different structural relationships with the Head. The Complement is always a sister to the Head; what needs modification is the relationship between the Head and the Specifier. A modification is required for the recognition of an Intermediate level which will include the Head and the complement but will exclude the Specifier. With respect to the example above the modification will yield the ff structure: NP Det N the solution N1 PP to the problem Page | 2

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The schemata in question are as in the structure they imply: XP XI ---- YP X1 --- X ZP XP YP X X1 ZP

YP is the Specifier, and the ZP is the Complement of the H. XI is the Intermediate (X-bar) projection. The underlying idea is that there is hierarchical relation between the Head and other elements in the projection. The hierarchy is now from double bar to single bar to zero bar, or vice versa. The double bar projection (X11) is what is referred to as maximal (phrasal) projection (XP) and X0 is the Head. The number and nature of the Complements is determined by the sub-categorisation properties of the Head. The noun solution has a PP Complement, whereas Mary in Mary solved the problem does not have any Complements: NP N1 N Mary The X-bar schemata apply to all other lexical categories in the same way: VP V1 V ZP A AP A1 ZP P PP P1 ZP

Note that of all phrasal constituents only the H is obligatory, but may take Complements depending on its sub-categorisation features. Note also that the Spec must have a maximal projection, that is, an XP in its own right (a DP?). Given that Adjectives and VP Adverbs are not Complements of the categories they modify they are excluded from the X1 position where the H joins its complement. Adjective differ from Specifiers in view of the fact that a Det and an NP Specifier cannot co-occur; e.g. *Marys the solution. This inability indicates that they are both Specifiers. Adjectives may occur with Determiners because they are not supposed to specify the Head Marys final solution to the problem. Again Specs tend to be unique. There is a single Spec position in the X-bar system. Adjectives however can be stacked, so that we can have more than one adjectives in a single NP. The order of Adjectives and with respect to Spec and H suggest that they occupy a position between Spec and H. Adjectives, unlike Specs do not have unique Page | 3

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positions, but are somehow added to the structure. They are adjoined to a given projection, and their representation is in terms of an adjunction structure an extension of a given category: NP Spec AP A1 A Marys final solution to the problem N N1 N1 PP

Extending a category amounts to creating a copy of it. Hence in the above example we have 2 N-bars, with the new N-bar serving as the mother node for the adjoined AP. Adjoined constituents are therefore daughters of X1 and sisters of X1. This distinguishes Adjuncts from Complements and Specifiers. Complements are daughters of X1 and sisters of X0. Specifiers are sisters of X1 and daughters of XP. XP -- YP X1 (Specifier rule) X1 -- X1 YP (or YP X1) (Adjunct rule) X1 -- X0 ZP (Complement rule) Adjunction may be at the right or left of the constituent it is adjoined to. Exercises Draw trees for the VP in the ff sentences: (i) The army totally destroyed the city (ii) John repeatedly viciously attacked Bill (iii) Mary only cleverly partially solved the problem THE X-BAR STRUCTURE OF THE S: IP The S is supposed to have 3 constituents: NP Aux VP. As phrasal categories, neither NP nor VP can be Head of S. Aux is the most likely candidate for H of S. If we assume Aux as Head of S, then if the X-bar schemata should have a single bar projection which dominates Aux and its complements, and a double bar maximal projection which dominates the single bar Aux projection and its Spec. Since the Aux category is where categories are inflected for Tense and Agreement we now call the category which intervenes between NP and VP, INFLECTION (INFL) OR (I). Restricting our attention for the moment to finite clauses, the Inflection Phrase (Sentence) may have the ff structure:

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IP Spec I AGR TNS V I1 VP V1 ...

Note that I is H, VP is the Complement of I and the NP Subject occupies the Spec position, immediately dominated by IP. The co-indexing of the AGR category under I and the NP Subject in the Spec IP position encodes the agreement relation between them in person, gender, and number. The Subject is said to be in SPEC-HEAD agreement with the (AGR category of) I. the SPEC-HEAD agreement is the principle that the Head and its Specifier (Spec XP) must agree in relevant features. Assignment (i) Read about and write a page on the Extended Projection Principle (EPP). (ii) Write about the X-bar structure of the Relative Clause.

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