X-bar theory SYNTAX: theory about the internal structure of syntactic constituents which was originally intended to place

constraints on the power of phrase structure rules. X-bar theory captures the insight that all phrases share some essential structural properties. EXAMPLE: the structures in (i) have in common that the head (noun, verb, adjective, or preposition) has an element to its right, which can be construed as its complement. (i) a lookV [for you] b the searchN [for you] c angryA [with you] d onP [with you] These structural properties are conventionally represented as in (ii). (ii) X'' /\ / \ specifier X' /\ / \ X complement In (ii), X is called the head of the phrase. X' and X'' are called projections of X. Typographically, these projections are marked by one or more primes (X' and X''), called bars. Thus, X' is pronounced X-bar; X'', X-double-bar etc.. The head is called the zero projection (also written as X0). The topnode X'' (or XP) is called the maximal projection of X. All other projections between the head and the maximal projection are called intermediate projections. The sister(s) of X are called the complements of the head), and the sister(s) of X' is/are the specifier(s) (of the phrase). The structure in (ii) embodies the following assumptions about the internal structure of constituents: - Each phrase XP has one unique, structurally obligatory element: the head X0 of the phrase. - There is one maximal projection, or X-max, corresponding to the phrasal node (XP). There is no strong consensus about whether the X-max node always has two bars. - All other elements within the XP besides the head are structurally optional, their presence being determined by principles of licensing ( theta-theory, case theory). They can appear both on the left and on the right hand side of the head. - The intermediate projection X' between the head and the maximal projection can be iterated. - In case of adjunction, the maximal projection XP can also be iterated. - Except for the possibilities of iteration, projections must obey condition (iii):

X-bar
The X-bar is a specific implementation of constituency grammars: it is a method of sentence analysis that divides the sentence into constituents, but it states some very specific rules for doing that:

the topmost node (S, in the diagram above) is called XP (X-phrase) and is considered to be the maximal projection of a head X. This means that the whole process must be understood bottom-up (from a head to its projections) instead of top-down. the "X" is actually a variable that must be replaced by any of the possible heads: noun (N), verb (V), adjective (J), adverb (A), etc. In that sense, there is no real XP, but NP's, VP's, JP's, etc. A VP (verbal phrase) is the maximal projection of a verb (V); a NP (noun phrase) is the maximal projection of a noun (N); and so on. The sentence above, for instance, can be considered to be the maximal projection of a V (killed) and, therefore, constitutes a VP (verbal phrase), instead of "S". The use of the "X" (and therefore "XP") comes from the fact that one of the claims of the theory is that all these phrases (NP, VP, JP, etc.) share the same underlying structure, i.e., a NP is a specific implementation of a general XP. projections are always binary, i.e., the tree cannot bring more than two branches at a time. In the example above, for instance, there is a VP (killed the man yesterday) with three branches. This is not possible in X-bar. In order to avoid this, the head may have intermediate projections before the maximal projection. These intermediate projections are called XB (from X-bar), and again must be replaced by the specific categories of the head (NB is the intermediate projection of N, VB is the intermediate projection of V, etc.). the maximal projection is "maximal", i.e., there can be one single maximal projection of the same head. If we simply replace "S" by "VP" in the example above, the VP would project a VP, which is not possible according to the X-bar. We have then to proliferate the intermediate projections (VB's in our case). One head can have as many intermediate projections as necessary, but it can have one single maximal projection. there can be four different types of arguments inside the X-bar structure: the head, which projects the whole structure ("killed", in the example above); the complement (or comp), that complements the head ("the man"); the adjunct (or adjt), that modifies the head ("yesterday"); and the specifier (or spec), that determines the head ("they"). The head can have as many complements and adjuncts as necessary, but it can have one single specifier. The intermediate projections (NB's, VB's, JB's, etc.) are actually combinations of the head with its complements and adjuncts, if any, where as the maximal projection (NP, VP, JP, etc.) is the combination of the head with its specifier, if any. the complements, adjuncts and specifiers are themselves maximal projections (of different categories other than the head). For instance, the complement of "killed" is not simply a noun but a NP ("the man"), which is the maximal projection of the noun head ("man"). Likewise, the adjunct of "killed" is not the word "yesterday" but

the AP ("yesterday"), which is the maximal projection of the adverbial head "yesterday". If we provide all the changes indicated above to our previous tree, we get the X-bar representation of the sentence, which is the following:

Case theory deals with a special property that all noun phrases are assumed to have. If they lack this feature, the sentence which contains the phrase is rendered ungrammatical. It is a theory of the Government and Binding framework and its successors. There are two Cases that are generally recognized in English--the nominative Case and the accusative Case--the latter is also called the objective Case. Case is assigned under terms of government, or at least the nominative and the accusative Cases are assigned this way. The accusative Case is assigned to the complement of a verb, unless the verb is marked to assign (or check for) another Case. The complement of a head is governed by the head. The nominative Case is assigned to the specifier of [+Tense]. If this theory of Case assignment is correct, then Case assignment is asymmetrical. What is worse is that it is not clear that a head governs a specifier. Worse still, is our view that there is no specifier. For the moment, we will just assume that the nominative Case is assigned to the subject NP of a sentence if tense is [+Tense]. We will assume here that all NPs are Case-inherent: [-Case_Inherent]. This means that we must find a value for Case--which we call [Nom], following the traditional name. The default Case seems to be the accusative Case = [-Nom]. Case is copied from the governor. Initially, we assume that Case is inherent in Verbs and Preposition but is never phonetically realized. The value of Case is a;ways [-Nom] in English verbs and prepositions.

Government is a special case of c-command. Although there are several variant definitions of government, we will adopt the following definition: 1. X governs Y iff a) X is a head b) X c-commands Y c) there is no governor of Y such that X c-commands the governor of Y (the intervening governor condition) d) X is [+G]

1. By special definition T governs the NP adjoined to TP. The second part of government seems flaky at best. It is imposed by the eory that [+Tense] assigns the nomintve Case to its left.. To illustrate this consider the following phrase: 1. kick the green door. Green is the head of the project of A which modifies door and green c-commands door . However, a modifier must not govern its modificand. The green door is the complement of kick and is thus governed by kick. Door cannot governed twice. In (d) below proud takes the complement of ones achievements and it governs the complement. Therefore, we must alter Ouhalla's definition of government to restrict c-command to what we could call complement-command. In the general definition of government, a head always governs its immediately adjacent complement: 1. 2. 3. 4. see the cat: see governs the cat. on the waterfront: on governs the waterfront. the ruler of the country: ruler governs of the country. proud of ones achievements: proud governs of ones achievements.

Condition (c) on the general definition prevents multiple government. A node may be governed by one and only governor. Consider (3) and (4) above:

of governs the country in (3).

Therefore, ruler cannot govern the country. Ruler governs the PP, but not the NP governed by the P of.

of governs ones achievements in (4).

Similarly proud does not govern ones achievements; only the PP containing it:

Note that the two nouns (heads) take no complements; hence they govern nothing. There are two kinds of Case--structural Case and inherent Case. We will consider only structural Case here. In the standard theory only two nodes may assign Case: V and P. V assigns the accusative (objective) Case to the item it governs, and P assigns the accusative or oblique Case to the item it governs. English does not appear to differentiate between the accusative and the oblique Cases--hence we will call it the accusative Case. There are languages that do differentiate between them. In the four consecutive sentences above see governs and assigns the accusative Case to the cat, on assigns the accusative Case to the waterfront, and of assigns the accusative Case to the country and ones achievements in (3) and (4), respectively. Ruler and proud govern their PP complements, but they do not assign Case to them. It has been proposed by Tim Stowell that prepositions and verbs, which assign Case, cannot be assigned Case. This seems to be a reasonable hypothesis and constraint on natural languages. Let us adopt it here. Case is formally assigned to the maximal projection. In many languages including English Case percolates down to the head of the projection and may be expressed as a morphological ending on the head:

Now the troublesome case. Chomsky considers the Nominative Case to be assigned by [+Tense]. [+Tense] assigns the nominative Case to the right. In the three level X-bar theory, the Nominative Case is assigned Spec-N by T: 1. John is proud of his achievements. John is raised from AP to the subject position

First note that John is not a complement of V or any other head. It cannot receive Case in its L-structure position. It must move to a Case-marked position. NP is created in the subject position and the features of JOHN are copied to it Now, according to the conventional theory of Case assignment, the nominative Case is assigned to John by [+TENSE]. The origninal position, the trace of NP, is not Case marked and is assigned NULL. One way we can view Case is in a feature matrix. It is assumed that parts of speech are made up of features in a feature matrix. Suppose Case is a feature in this matrix and it is unfilled: BOOK lexical item +N, -V category Number +Count Count ____ subcategorization Case The values for Count and Bounding are inherent features. The value for Case is not. NP is not legitimate until a value has been established for Case. When the accusative Case is assigned a noun, this value is satisfied and the noun becomes legitimate: book +N, -V +Count -Bound ____ Acc lexical item category Count Bounding subcategorization Case

Note the Cases are not represented in binary form when listed as Nom and Acc. Since English has only two visible Cases (in pronouns), the default is assigned a minus value. Which caseform is the default? Probably the accusative Case. It is assigned by verbs and adjectives, whereas the nominative Case is assigned by plus tense. Thus, [+Nom] stands for the nominative Case, and [-Nom] for the default accusative: book +Count -Bound -Nom features Count Bounding Case

Government and Case assignment go beyond complements. Otherwise, government would be a sister relationship. Consider the following example:

1. John considers Mary to be a bright person. First note that (1) contains two basic propositions: 1. John consider X 2. X = Mary (be) a bright person

Binding is a relationship that holds between what is traditionally called a pronoun and the antecedent of the pronoun. Pronouns are words that have no reference. They must be linked to some other form, called an antecedent, to determine their referent. There are two general classes of pronouns. The first are called anaphors. The antecedent of the anaphor must be in the same clause as the anaphor. This restriction will be modified. Consider the following sentence: (1) John saw himself in the mirror.

The pronoun himself is an anaphor; John is its antecedent. By linking himself to its anaphor John. the referent of himself is determined--the referent is John. The anaphor is now said to be bound to its antecedent. The anaphor cannot be bound to an antecedent in another clause: (2) *John said that Mary saw himself.

Sentence (2) fails because the anaphor himself must be bound a NP in its own clause, and the only other NP in the clause is Mary, but Mary is feminine whereas himself is masculine. The gender of the anaphor must agree with the gender of the antecedent. Note that if himself were replaced with herself, the sentence would be acceptable: (3) John said that Mary saw herself. The anaphor herself is feminine and the antecedent Mary is also feminine. The anaphors which end in '-self' are called reflexive anaphors. English contains another set of anaphors called reciprocal anaphors. Reciprocal anaphors require a plural subject. Two examples include: (4) John and Mary sent each other a new CD. (5) We spoke to each other last night..

In (4) the reciprocal anaphor means that John sent Mary a new CD and that Mary sent John a new CD. In (5) the reciprocal anaphor means that the speaker and some other person (we) spoke to the other. Reciprocal anaphors do not imply a reflexive interpretation.