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X-bar theory

July 06, 2023

"X'" redirects here. For the sound, see velar ejective fricative.

In linguistics, X-bar theory is a model of phrase-structure grammar and a theory of syntactic category formation[1] that was first proposed by Noam Chomsky in 1970[2] reformulating the ideas of Zellig Harris (1951,[3]) and further developed by Ray Jackendoff (1974,[4] 1977a,[5] 1977b[6]), along the lines of the theory of generative grammar put forth in the 1950s by Chomsky.[7][8] It attempts to capture the structure of phrasal categories with a single uniform structure called the X-bar schema, basing itself on the assumption that any phrase in natural language is an XP (X phrase) that is headed by a given syntactic category X. It played a significant role in resolving issues that phrase structure rules had, representative of which is the proliferation of grammatical rules, which is against the thesis of generative grammar.

X-bar theory was incorporated into both transformational and nontransformational theories of syntax, including government and binding theory (GB), generalized phrase structure grammar (GPSG), lexical-functional grammar (LFG), and head-driven phrase structure grammar (HPSG).[9] Although recent work in the minimalist program has largely abandoned X-bar schemata in favor of bare phrase structure approaches, the theory's central assumptions are still valid in different forms and terms in many theories of minimalist syntax.

Background

The X-bar theory was developed to resolve the issues that phrase structure rules (PSR) under the Standard Theory[10] had.[11]

The PSR approach has the following four main issues.

  1. It assumes exocentric structures[FN 1] such as "S → NP Aux VP". This is contrary to the fact that phrases have heads in all circumstances.[11]
  2. While the sentence John talked to the man, for example, involves the PSR of a verb phrase "VP → V (PP)",[FN 2] John talked to the man in person involves the PSR of "VP → V (PP) (PP)". This indicates that it is necessary to posit new PSRs every time when an undefined structure is observed in E-language, which amounts to adding an indiscriminate number of grammatical rules to Universal Grammar. This poses serious issues from the perspectives of the Plato's problem and the poverty of the stimulus.[10]
  3. It wrongly rules in structures that are impossible in natural language such as "VP → NP A PP", because as in 1 and 2, the PSR countenances phrases that do not have endocentric structures.[FN 3][11]
  4. It fails to capture sentence ambiguities because it assumes flat, nonhierarchical structures.[12]

The X-bar theory is a theory that attempts to resolve these issues by assuming the mold or template phrasal structure of "XP".

X-bar schema

Basic principles

The "X" in the X-bar theory is equivalent to a variable in mathematics: It can be substituted by syntactic categories such as N, V, A, and P. These categories are lexemes and not phrases: The "X-bar" is a grammatical unit larger than X, thus than a lexeme, and the X-double-bar (=XP) outsizes the X(-single)-bar. X-double-bar categories are equal to phrasal categories such as NP, VP, AP, and PP.[5]

The X-bar theory assumes that all phrasal categories have the structure in Figure 1.[5][13] This structure is called the X-bar schema.

 
Figure 1

As in Figure 1, the phrasal category XP is notated by an X with a double overbar.[FN 4] For typewriting reasons, the bar symbol is often substituted by the prime ('), as in X'.

The X-bar theory embodies two central principles.

  • Headedness principle: Every phrase has a head.[14]
  • Binarity principle: Every node branches into two different nodes.[14]

The headedness principle resolves the issues 1 and 3 above simultaneously. The binarity principle is important to projection and ambiguity, which will be explained below.

The X-bar schema consists of a head and its circumstantial components, in accordance with the headedness principle.[4][5][6][13] The relevant components are as follows:

  • Specifier: [obligatory] The node that is in a sister relation with an X' node.[15] This is a term that refers to the syntactic position itself.
  • Head: [obligatory] The core of a phrase, into which a lexeme fits. The head determines the form and characteristics of the phrase as a whole.[16]
  • Complement: [obligatory] An argument required by the head.
  • Adjunct: [optional] A modifier for the phrase constituted by the head.

The specifier, head, and complement are obligatory; hence, a phrasal category XP must contain one specifier, one head, and one complement. On the other hand, the adjunct is optional; hence, a phrasal category contains zero or more adjuncts. Accordingly, when a phrasal category XP does not have an adjunct, it forms the structure in Figure 2.

 
Figure 2

For example, the NP linguistics in the sentence John studies linguistics has the structure in Figure 3.

 
Figure 3

It is important that even if there are no candidates that can fit into the specifier and complement positions, these positions are syntactically present, and thus they are merely empty and unoccupied. (This is a natural consequence of the binarity principle.) This means that all phrasal categories have fundamentally uniform structures under the X-bar schema, which makes it unnecessary to assume that different phrases have different structures, unlike when we adopt the PSR.[13] (This resolves the second issue above.) In the meanwhile, one needs to be wary of when such empty positions are representationally omitted as in Figure 4.

 
Figure 4

In illustrating syntactic structures this way, at least one X'-level node is present in any circumstance because the complement is obligatory.[11][17]

Next, the X'' and X' inherit the characteristics of the head X. This trait inheritance is referred to as projection.[18]

 
Figure 5

Figure 5 suggests that syntactic structures are derived in a bottom-up fashion under the X-bar theory. More specifically, the structures are derived via the following processes.

  1. A lexeme is fitted into the head. Note that heads are sometimes called zero-level projections because they are X-zero-bar-level categories, notated as X0.[19]
  2. The head and the complement are combined to form an X-single-bar (X, X') node, which constitutes a semi-phrasal category (a syntactic category not as big as a phrase). This category is called intermediate projection.[11]
  3. (An adjunct, if there is any, combines with an X' to form another X'. If there is more than one adjunct, this process is repeated.)
  4. An intermediate projection combines with the specifier, forming a complete phrasal category XP (X-double-bar). This category is called maximal projection.[11]

It is important that all the processes except for the third are obligatory. This means that one phrasal category necessarily includes X0, X, and XP (=X''). Moreover, nodes bigger than X0 (thus, X and XP nodes) are called constituents.[20]

Directionality of branching

Figures 1–5 are based on the word order of English, but the X-bar schema does not specify the directionality of branching because the binarity principle does not have a rule on it. For example, John read a long book of linguistics with a red cover, which involves two adjuncts, may have either of the structures in Figure 6 or Figure 7. (The figures follow the convention of omitting the inner structures of certain phrasal categories with triangles.)

 
Figure 6
 
Figure 7

The structure in Figure 6 yields the meaning the book of linguistics with a red cover is long, and the one in Figure 7 the long book of linguistics is with a red cover (see also #Hierarchical structure). What is important is the directionality of the nodes N'2 and N'3: One is left-branching, while the other is right-branching. Accordingly, the X-bar theory, more specifically the binarity principle, does not impose a restriction on how a node branches.

When it comes to the head and the complement, their relative order is determined based on the principles-and-parameters model of language,[21] more specifically by the head parameter (not by the X-bar schema itself). A principle is a shared, invariable rule of grammar across languages, whereas a parameter is a typologically variable aspect of the grammars.[21] One can either set their parameter with the values of "+" or "-": In the case of the head parameter, one configures the parameter of [±head first], depending on what language they primarily speak.[22] If this parameter is configured to be [+head first], what results is head-initial languages such as English, and if it is configured to be [-head first], what results is head-final languages such as Japanese. For example, the English sentence John ate an apple and its corresponding Japanese sentence John-ga ringo-o tabe-ta (ジョンがリンゴを食べた; John-NOM apple-ACC eat-PAST) have the structures in Figure 8 and Figure 9, respectively.

 
Figure 8
 
Figure 9

Note finally that the directionality of the specifier node is in essence unspecified as well, although this is subject to debate: Some argue that the relevant node is necessarily left-branching across languages, the idea of which is (partially) motivated by the fact that both English and Japanese have subjects on the left of a VP, whereas others such as Saito and Fukui (1998)[23] argue that the directionality of the node is not fixed and needs to be externally determined, for example by the head parameter.

Structure of sentence

Structure of S

Under the PSR, the structure of S (sentence) is illustrated as follows.[7][8][24]

  • S → NP (Aux) VP

However, this structure violates the headedness principle because it has an exocentric, headless structure, and would also violate the binarity principle if an Aux (auxiliary) occurs, because the S node will then be ternary-branching. Given these, Chomsky (1981)[13] proposed that S is an InflP headed by the functional category Infl(ection), and later in Chomsky (1986a),[17] this category was relabelled as I (hence constitutes an IP), following the notational convention that phrasal categories are represented in the form of XP, with two letters.[FN 5] The category I includes auxiliary verbs such as will and can, clitics such as -s of the third person singular present and -ed of the past tense. This is consistent with the headedness principle, which requires that a phrase have a head, because a sentence (or a clause) necessarily involves an element that determines the inflection of a verb.

Assuming that S constitutes an IP, the structure of the sentence John studies linguistics at the university, for example, can be illustrated as in Figure 10.[FN 6]

 
Figure 10

As is obvious, the IP hypothesis makes it possible to regard the grammatical unit of sentence as a phrasal category. It is also important that the configuration in Figure 10 is fully compatible with the central assumptions of the X-bar theory, namely the headedness principle and the binarity principle.

Structure of S'

Words that introduce subordinate or complement clauses are called complementizers,[28] and representative of them are that, if, and for.[FN 7] Under the PSR, complement clauses were assumed to constitute the category S'.[30][31][32]

  • S' → COMP S

Chomsky (1986a)[17] proposed that this category is in fact a CP headed by the functional category C.[28] The sentence I think that John is honest, for example, then has the following structure.

 
Figure 11

Moreover, Chomsky (1986a)[17] assumes that the landing site of wh-movement is the specifier position of CP (Spec-CP). Accordingly, the wh-question What did John eat?, for example, is derived as in Figure 12.[FN 8]

 
Figure 12

In this derivation, the I-to-C movement is an instance of subject-auxiliary inversion (SAI), or more generally, head movement.[FN 9]

Other phrasal structures

  • VP-internal subject hypothesis: A hypothesis on the inner structure of VP proposed by researchers such as Fukui and Speas (1986)[35] and Kitagawa (1986).[36] It assumes that the sentential subject is base-generated in Spec-VP, not in Spec-IP.
  • DP Hypothesis: A hypothesis proposed by Abney (1987),[37] according to whom noun phrases are not NPs but DPs headed by the functional category D.
  • VP shell: An analysis put forth by Larson (1988),[38] which assumes two-layered structures of VP. Later in Chomsky (1995),[26] the higher VP was replaced by vP headed by the functional category v (little/small v, traditionally written in italics).
  • PredP Hypothesis: A hypothesis proposed by Bowers (1993,[39] 2001[40]), according to whom small clauses[41] are PredPs headed by the functional category Pred.
  • Bare Phrase Structure (BPS): A theory put forth by Chomsky (1995)[26] as a replacement of the X-bar theory. It dispenses with a "template" structure like the X-bar schema, and yields syntactic structures by (iterative applications of) an operation called Merge, which serves to connect two syntactic objects such as words and phrases into one. Some radical versions of it even reject syntactic category labels such as V and A. See also Minimalist Program.

Hierarchical structure

The PSR has the shortcoming of being incapable of capturing sentence ambiguities.

  • I saw a man with binoculars.[42]

This sentence is ambiguous between the reading I saw a man, using binoculars, in which with binoculars modifies the VP, and the reading I saw a man who had binoculars, in which the PP modifies the NP.[42] Under the PSR model, the sentence above is subject to the following two parsing rules.

  • S → NP VP
  • VP → V NP PP

The sentence's structure under these PSRs would be as in Figure 13.

 
Figure 13

It is obvious that this structure fails to capture the NP modification reading because [PP with binoculars] modifies the VP no matter how one tries to illustrate the structure. The X-bar theory, however, successfully captures the ambiguity as demonstrated in the configurations in Figure 14 and 15 below, because it assumes hierarchical structures in accordance with the binarity principle.

 
Figure14
 
Figure15

Thus, the X-bar theory resolves the fourth issue mentioned in #Background as well. Note that there is always a unilateral relation from syntax to semantics (never from semantics to syntax) in any version of generative grammar because syntactic computation starts from the lexicon, then continues into the syntax, then into Logical Form (LF) at which meanings are computed. This is so under any of Standard Theory (Chomsky 1965[10]), Extended Standard Theory (Chomsky 1972[43]), and Revised Extended Standard Theory (Chomsky 1981[13]).

Footnotes

  1. ^ Phrasal structures that lack a head.
  2. ^ The parentheses indicate that the phrasal category in them is optional.
  3. ^ Phrasal structures that include a head.
  4. ^ Jackendoff (1977a)[5] assumes bar-levels up to X-triple-bar.
  5. ^ The functional category I was later replaced by T(ense) and Agr(eement) along the proposal by Pollock (1989).[25] The functional category Agr, however, was rejected by Chomsky (1995)[26] because it presumably made no contributions at LF. For this reason, clauses are generally assumed to be TPs headed by the functional category T in contemporary linguistic theory.
  6. ^ In the structure in Figure 10, the linear order of the whole sentence is derived by affix hopping (also known as affix movement). Affix hopping is an operation that is applied at phonological form (PF) after syntactic formation, and in this case, it serves to move the "sound" of the inflectional suffix /-s/ and adjoin it onto the verb.[27] Chomsky (1981)[13] calls this kind of tense affix movement Rule R.
  7. ^ Sometimes, whether is also regarded as a complementizer, but many researchers such as Nakajima (1996)[29] analyze that whether does not occur in the head position of CP, but in the specifier position of CP (Spec-CP), just as wh-words do. This amounts to saying that whether is not a C0: It is subject to debate as to which syntactic category it belongs to.
  8. ^ Wh-movement is subject to Chomsky's (1973)[33] subjacency condition, and is applied in a successive cyclic manner, thus via every Spec-CP.
  9. ^ See Baker (1988)[34] for details.

References

  1. ^ The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics (3 ed.). Oxford University Press. 2014-01-01. doi:10.1093/acref/9780199675128.001.0001. ISBN 978-0-19-967512-8.
  2. ^ Chomsky, Noam (1970). Remarks on Nominalization. In: R. Jacobs and P. Rosenbaum (eds.) Reading in English Transformational Grammar, 184–221. Waltham: Ginn.
  3. ^ Harris, Zellig (1951). Methods in Structural Linguistics. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
  4. ^ a b Jackendoff, Ray (1974). Introduction to the X-bar Convention. Indiana University Linguistics Club.
  5. ^ a b c d e Jackendoff, Ray (1977a). X-bar-Syntax: A Study of Phrase Structure. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
  6. ^ a b Jackendoff, Ray (1977b) Constraints on Phrase Structure Rules, in P. W. Culicover, T. Wasow & A. Akmajian (eds.), Formal Syntax, Academic Press, New York, pp. 249–83.
  7. ^ a b Chomsky, Noam (1955). The Logical Structure of Linguistic Theory. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
  8. ^ a b Chomsky, Noam (1957). Syntactic Structures. The Hague: Mouton.
  9. ^ Müller, Stefan (2020). Grammatical theory: From transformational grammar to constraint-based approaches (4th revised and extended ed.). Language Science Press. p. 75. doi:10.5281/zenodo.3992307. ISBN 978-3-96110-273-0.
  10. ^ a b c Chomsky, Noam (1965). Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press..
  11. ^ a b c d e f Haraguchi; et al. (2016). Zouhoban Chomsky Riron Jiten (Kenkyusha's Dictionary of Theoretical Linguistics Enlarged ed.). Tokyo: Kenkyusha. pp. 521–523.
  12. ^ Kishimoto, Hideki (2009). Basic Seisei Bunpo (The Basics of Generative Grammar). Tokyo: Hitsuji Shobo.
  13. ^ a b c d e f Chomsky, Noam (1981). Lectures on Government and Binding. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
  14. ^ a b Radford, Andrew (2016). Analysing English Sentences: Second Edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 114–115.
  15. ^ Araki, Kazuo, ed. (1999). Eigogaku Yogo Jiten (A Dictionary of Technical Terms of English Linguistics). Tokyo: Sanseido. p. 587.
  16. ^ Araki, Kazuo, ed. (1999). Eigogaku Yogo Jiten (A Dictionary of Technical Terms of English Linguistics). Tokyo: Sanseido. p. 249.
  17. ^ a b c d Chomsky, Noam (1986a). Barriers. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
  18. ^ Araki, Kazuo, ed. (1999). Eigogaku Yogo Jiten (A Dictionary of Technical Terms of English Linguistics). Tokyo: Sanseido. p. 489.
  19. ^ "Basic English Syntax with Exercises". Retrieved 2021-10-22.
  20. ^ Haraguchi; et al. (2016). Zouhoban Chomsky Riron Jiten (Kenkyusha's Dictionary of Theoretical Linguistics Enlarged ed.). Tokyo: Kenkyusha. pp. 125–126.
  21. ^ a b Chomsky, Noam (1986b). Knowledge of Language: Its Nature, Origin and Use. New York: Praeger.
  22. ^ Araki, Kazuo, ed. (1999). Eigogaku Yogo Jiten (A Dictionary of Technical Terms of English Linguistics). Tokyo: Sanseido. p. 424.
  23. ^ Saito, Mamoru; Naoki, Fukui (1998). "Order in Phrase Structure and Movement". Linguistic Inquiry. 29 (3): 439–474. doi:10.1162/002438998553815. S2CID 57572491.
  24. ^ Chomsky, Noam (1981). The Logical Structure of Linguistic Theory. New York: Plenum Press.
  25. ^ Pollock, Jean-Yves (1989). "Verb Movement, Universal Grammar, and the Structure of IP". Linguistic Inquiry. 20 (3): 365–424.
  26. ^ a b c Chomsky, Noam (1995). The Minimalist Program. Cambridge MA: MIT Press.
  27. ^ Araki, Kazuo, ed. (1999). Eigogaku Yogo Jiten (A Dictionary of Technical Terms of English Linguistics). Tokyo: Sanseido. p. 16.
  28. ^ a b Radford, Andrew (2016). Analysing English Sentences: Second Edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 86–99.
  29. ^ Nakajima, Heizo (1996). "Complementizer Selection". The Linguistic Review. 13 (2): 143–164. doi:10.1515/tlir.1996.13.2.143. S2CID 201091227.
  30. ^ Bresnan, Joan (1970). "On Complementizers: Toward a Syntactic Theory of Complement Types". Foundations of Language. 6: 297–321.
  31. ^ Bresnan, Joan (1972) Theory of Complementation in English Syntax, Doctoral dissertation, MIT.
  32. ^ Bresnan, Joan (1979). Theory of Complementation in English Syntax. New York: Garland.
  33. ^ Chomsky, Noam (1973). Conditions on Transformations. In: Stephen R. Anderson and Paul Kiparsky (eds.) A Festschrift for Morris Halle, 232–286. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston.
  34. ^ Baker, Mark C. (1988). Incorporation: A Theory of Grammatical Function Changing. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
  35. ^ Fukui, Naoki and Speas, Margaret J. (1986) Specifiers and Projection. MIT Working Papers in Linguistics 8: 128–172.
  36. ^ Kitagawa, Yoshihisa (1986). Subjects in Japanese and English, Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Massachusetts. Reprinted in Kitagawa (1994), Routledge.
  37. ^ Abney, Steven P. (1987). The English Noun Phrase in Its Sentential Aspect. Doctoral dissertation, MIT.
  38. ^ Larson, Richard K. (1988). On the Double Object Construction. Linguistic Inquiry 19 (3): 335–391.
  39. ^ Bowers, John (1993). "The Syntax of Predication". Linguistic Inquiry. 24: 591–656.
  40. ^ Bowers, John (2001). Predication. In: Mark Baltin and Chris Collins (eds.), The Handbook of Contemporary Syntactic Theory, 299–333, Blackwell.
  41. ^ Stowell, Timothy (1981). Origins of Phrase Structure. Doctoral dissertation, MIT.
  42. ^ a b "Syntax I". Retrieved 2021-10-23.
  43. ^ Chomsky, Noam (1972). Studies on Semantics in Generative Grammar. The Hague: Mouton.

See also

July 06, 2023
theory, redirects, here, sound, velar, ejective, fricative, linguistics, model, phrase, structure, grammar, theory, syntactic, category, formation, that, first, proposed, noam, chomsky, 1970, reformulating, ideas, zellig, harris, 1951, further, developed, jack. X redirects here For the sound see velar ejective fricative In linguistics X bar theory is a model of phrase structure grammar and a theory of syntactic category formation 1 that was first proposed by Noam Chomsky in 1970 2 reformulating the ideas of Zellig Harris 1951 3 and further developed by Ray Jackendoff 1974 4 1977a 5 1977b 6 along the lines of the theory of generative grammar put forth in the 1950s by Chomsky 7 8 It attempts to capture the structure of phrasal categories with a single uniform structure called the X bar schema basing itself on the assumption that any phrase in natural language is an XP X phrase that is headed by a given syntactic category X It played a significant role in resolving issues that phrase structure rules had representative of which is the proliferation of grammatical rules which is against the thesis of generative grammar X bar theory was incorporated into both transformational and nontransformational theories of syntax including government and binding theory GB generalized phrase structure grammar GPSG lexical functional grammar LFG and head driven phrase structure grammar HPSG 9 Although recent work in the minimalist program has largely abandoned X bar schemata in favor of bare phrase structure approaches the theory s central assumptions are still valid in different forms and terms in many theories of minimalist syntax Contents 1 Background 2 X bar schema 2 1 Basic principles 2 2 Directionality of branching 3 Structure of sentence 3 1 Structure of S 3 2 Structure of S 3 3 Other phrasal structures 4 Hierarchical structure 5 Footnotes 6 References 7 See alsoBackground EditThe X bar theory was developed to resolve the issues that phrase structure rules PSR under the Standard Theory 10 had 11 The PSR approach has the following four main issues It assumes exocentric structures FN 1 such as S NP Aux VP This is contrary to the fact that phrases have heads in all circumstances 11 While the sentence John talked to the man for example involves the PSR of a verb phrase VP V PP FN 2 John talked to the man in person involves the PSR of VP V PP PP This indicates that it is necessary to posit new PSRs every time when an undefined structure is observed in E language which amounts to adding an indiscriminate number of grammatical rules to Universal Grammar This poses serious issues from the perspectives of the Plato s problem and the poverty of the stimulus 10 It wrongly rules in structures that are impossible in natural language such as VP NP A PP because as in 1 and 2 the PSR countenances phrases that do not have endocentric structures FN 3 11 It fails to capture sentence ambiguities because it assumes flat nonhierarchical structures 12 The X bar theory is a theory that attempts to resolve these issues by assuming the mold or template phrasal structure of XP X bar schema EditBasic principles Edit The X in the X bar theory is equivalent to a variable in mathematics It can be substituted by syntactic categories such as N V A and P These categories are lexemes and not phrases The X bar is a grammatical unit larger than X thus than a lexeme and the X double bar XP outsizes the X single bar X double bar categories are equal to phrasal categories such as NP VP AP and PP 5 The X bar theory assumes that all phrasal categories have the structure in Figure 1 5 13 This structure is called the X bar schema Figure 1 As in Figure 1 the phrasal category XP is notated by an X with a double overbar FN 4 For typewriting reasons the bar symbol is often substituted by the prime as in X The X bar theory embodies two central principles Headedness principle Every phrase has a head 14 Binarity principle Every node branches into two different nodes 14 The headedness principle resolves the issues 1 and 3 above simultaneously The binarity principle is important to projection and ambiguity which will be explained below The X bar schema consists of a head and its circumstantial components in accordance with the headedness principle 4 5 6 13 The relevant components are as follows Specifier obligatory The node that is in a sister relation with an X node 15 This is a term that refers to the syntactic position itself Head obligatory The core of a phrase into which a lexeme fits The head determines the form and characteristics of the phrase as a whole 16 Complement obligatory An argument required by the head Adjunct optional A modifier for the phrase constituted by the head The specifier head and complement are obligatory hence a phrasal category XP must contain one specifier one head and one complement On the other hand the adjunct is optional hence a phrasal category contains zero or more adjuncts Accordingly when a phrasal category XP does not have an adjunct it forms the structure in Figure 2 Figure 2 For example the NP linguistics in the sentence John studies linguistics has the structure in Figure 3 Figure 3 It is important that even if there are no candidates that can fit into the specifier and complement positions these positions are syntactically present and thus they are merely empty and unoccupied This is a natural consequence of the binarity principle This means that all phrasal categories have fundamentally uniform structures under the X bar schema which makes it unnecessary to assume that different phrases have different structures unlike when we adopt the PSR 13 This resolves the second issue above In the meanwhile one needs to be wary of when such empty positions are representationally omitted as in Figure 4 Figure 4 In illustrating syntactic structures this way at least one X level node is present in any circumstance because the complement is obligatory 11 17 Next the X and X inherit the characteristics of the head X This trait inheritance is referred to as projection 18 Figure 5 Figure 5 suggests that syntactic structures are derived in a bottom up fashion under the X bar theory More specifically the structures are derived via the following processes A lexeme is fitted into the head Note that heads are sometimes called zero level projections because they are X zero bar level categories notated as X0 19 The head and the complement are combined to form an X single bar X X node which constitutes a semi phrasal category a syntactic category not as big as a phrase This category is called intermediate projection 11 An adjunct if there is any combines with an X to form another X If there is more than one adjunct this process is repeated An intermediate projection combines with the specifier forming a complete phrasal category XP X double bar This category is called maximal projection 11 It is important that all the processes except for the third are obligatory This means that one phrasal category necessarily includes X0 X and XP X Moreover nodes bigger than X0 thus X and XP nodes are called constituents 20 Directionality of branching Edit Figures 1 5 are based on the word order of English but the X bar schema does not specify the directionality of branching because the binarity principle does not have a rule on it For example John read a long book of linguistics with a red cover which involves two adjuncts may have either of the structures in Figure 6 or Figure 7 The figures follow the convention of omitting the inner structures of certain phrasal categories with triangles Figure 6 Figure 7 The structure in Figure 6 yields the meaning the book of linguistics with a red cover is long and the one in Figure 7 the long book of linguistics is with a red cover see also Hierarchical structure What is important is the directionality of the nodes N 2 and N 3 One is left branching while the other is right branching Accordingly the X bar theory more specifically the binarity principle does not impose a restriction on how a node branches When it comes to the head and the complement their relative order is determined based on the principles and parameters model of language 21 more specifically by the head parameter not by the X bar schema itself A principle is a shared invariable rule of grammar across languages whereas a parameter is a typologically variable aspect of the grammars 21 One can either set their parameter with the values of or In the case of the head parameter one configures the parameter of head first depending on what language they primarily speak 22 If this parameter is configured to be head first what results is head initial languages such as English and if it is configured to be head first what results is head final languages such as Japanese For example the English sentence John ate an apple and its corresponding Japanese sentence John ga ringo o tabe ta ジョンがリンゴを食べた John NOM apple ACC eat PAST have the structures in Figure 8 and Figure 9 respectively Figure 8 Figure 9 Note finally that the directionality of the specifier node is in essence unspecified as well although this is subject to debate Some argue that the relevant node is necessarily left branching across languages the idea of which is partially motivated by the fact that both English and Japanese have subjects on the left of a VP whereas others such as Saito and Fukui 1998 23 argue that the directionality of the node is not fixed and needs to be externally determined for example by the head parameter Structure of sentence EditStructure of S Edit Under the PSR the structure of S sentence is illustrated as follows 7 8 24 S NP Aux VPHowever this structure violates the headedness principle because it has an exocentric headless structure and would also violate the binarity principle if an Aux auxiliary occurs because the S node will then be ternary branching Given these Chomsky 1981 13 proposed that S is an InflP headed by the functional category Infl ection and later in Chomsky 1986a 17 this category was relabelled as I hence constitutes an IP following the notational convention that phrasal categories are represented in the form of XP with two letters FN 5 The category I includes auxiliary verbs such as will and can clitics such as s of the third person singular present and ed of the past tense This is consistent with the headedness principle which requires that a phrase have a head because a sentence or a clause necessarily involves an element that determines the inflection of a verb Assuming that S constitutes an IP the structure of the sentence John studies linguistics at the university for example can be illustrated as in Figure 10 FN 6 Figure 10 As is obvious the IP hypothesis makes it possible to regard the grammatical unit of sentence as a phrasal category It is also important that the configuration in Figure 10 is fully compatible with the central assumptions of the X bar theory namely the headedness principle and the binarity principle Structure of S Edit Words that introduce subordinate or complement clauses are called complementizers 28 and representative of them are that if and for FN 7 Under the PSR complement clauses were assumed to constitute the category S 30 31 32 S COMP SChomsky 1986a 17 proposed that this category is in fact a CP headed by the functional category C 28 The sentence I think that John is honest for example then has the following structure Figure 11 Moreover Chomsky 1986a 17 assumes that the landing site of wh movement is the specifier position of CP Spec CP Accordingly the wh question What did John eat for example is derived as in Figure 12 FN 8 Figure 12 In this derivation the I to C movement is an instance of subject auxiliary inversion SAI or more generally head movement FN 9 Other phrasal structures Edit VP internal subject hypothesis A hypothesis on the inner structure of VP proposed by researchers such as Fukui and Speas 1986 35 and Kitagawa 1986 36 It assumes that the sentential subject is base generated in Spec VP not in Spec IP DP Hypothesis A hypothesis proposed by Abney 1987 37 according to whom noun phrases are not NPs but DPs headed by the functional category D VP shell An analysis put forth by Larson 1988 38 which assumes two layered structures of VP Later in Chomsky 1995 26 the higher VP was replaced by vP headed by the functional category v little small v traditionally written in italics PredP Hypothesis A hypothesis proposed by Bowers 1993 39 2001 40 according to whom small clauses 41 are PredPs headed by the functional category Pred Bare Phrase Structure BPS A theory put forth by Chomsky 1995 26 as a replacement of the X bar theory It dispenses with a template structure like the X bar schema and yields syntactic structures by iterative applications of an operation called Merge which serves to connect two syntactic objects such as words and phrases into one Some radical versions of it even reject syntactic category labels such as V and A See also Minimalist Program Hierarchical structure EditThe PSR has the shortcoming of being incapable of capturing sentence ambiguities I saw a man with binoculars 42 This sentence is ambiguous between the reading I saw a man using binoculars in which with binoculars modifies the VP and the reading I saw a man who had binoculars in which the PP modifies the NP 42 Under the PSR model the sentence above is subject to the following two parsing rules S NP VP VP V NP PPThe sentence s structure under these PSRs would be as in Figure 13 Figure 13 It is obvious that this structure fails to capture the NP modification reading because PP with binoculars modifies the VP no matter how one tries to illustrate the structure The X bar theory however successfully captures the ambiguity as demonstrated in the configurations in Figure 14 and 15 below because it assumes hierarchical structures in accordance with the binarity principle Figure14 Figure15 Thus the X bar theory resolves the fourth issue mentioned in Background as well Note that there is always a unilateral relation from syntax to semantics never from semantics to syntax in any version of generative grammar because syntactic computation starts from the lexicon then continues into the syntax then into Logical Form LF at which meanings are computed This is so under any of Standard Theory Chomsky 1965 10 Extended Standard Theory Chomsky 1972 43 and Revised Extended Standard Theory Chomsky 1981 13 Footnotes Edit Phrasal structures that lack a head The parentheses indicate that the phrasal category in them is optional Phrasal structures that include a head Jackendoff 1977a 5 assumes bar levels up to X triple bar The functional category I was later replaced by T ense and Agr eement along the proposal by Pollock 1989 25 The functional category Agr however was rejected by Chomsky 1995 26 because it presumably made no contributions at LF For this reason clauses are generally assumed to be TPs headed by the functional category T in contemporary linguistic theory In the structure in Figure 10 the linear order of the whole sentence is derived by affix hopping also known as affix movement Affix hopping is an operation that is applied at phonological form PF after syntactic formation and in this case it serves to move the sound of the inflectional suffix s and adjoin it onto the verb 27 Chomsky 1981 13 calls this kind of tense affix movement Rule R Sometimes whether is also regarded as a complementizer but many researchers such as Nakajima 1996 29 analyze that whether does not occur in the head position of CP but in the specifier position of CP Spec CP just as wh words do This amounts to saying that whether is not a C0 It is subject to debate as to which syntactic category it belongs to Wh movement is subject to Chomsky s 1973 33 subjacency condition and is applied in a successive cyclic manner thus via every Spec CP See Baker 1988 34 for details References Edit The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics 3 ed Oxford University Press 2014 01 01 doi 10 1093 acref 9780199675128 001 0001 ISBN 978 0 19 967512 8 Chomsky Noam 1970 Remarks on Nominalization In R Jacobs and P Rosenbaum eds Reading in English Transformational Grammar 184 221 Waltham Ginn Harris Zellig 1951 Methods in Structural Linguistics Chicago IL University of Chicago Press a b Jackendoff Ray 1974 Introduction to the X bar Convention Indiana University Linguistics Club a b c d e Jackendoff Ray 1977a X bar Syntax A Study of Phrase Structure Cambridge MA MIT Press a b Jackendoff Ray 1977b Constraints on Phrase Structure Rules in P W Culicover T Wasow amp A Akmajian eds Formal Syntax Academic Press New York pp 249 83 a b Chomsky Noam 1955 The Logical Structure of Linguistic Theory Cambridge MA MIT Press a b Chomsky Noam 1957 Syntactic Structures The Hague Mouton Muller Stefan 2020 Grammatical theory From transformational grammar to constraint based approaches 4th revised and extended ed Language Science Press p 75 doi 10 5281 zenodo 3992307 ISBN 978 3 96110 273 0 a b c Chomsky Noam 1965 Aspects of the Theory of Syntax Cambridge MA MIT Press a b c d e f Haraguchi et al 2016 Zouhoban Chomsky Riron Jiten Kenkyusha s Dictionary of Theoretical Linguistics Enlarged ed Tokyo Kenkyusha pp 521 523 Kishimoto Hideki 2009 Basic Seisei Bunpo The Basics of Generative Grammar Tokyo Hitsuji Shobo a b c d e f Chomsky Noam 1981 Lectures on Government and Binding Cambridge MA MIT Press a b Radford Andrew 2016 Analysing English Sentences Second Edition Cambridge Cambridge University Press pp 114 115 Araki Kazuo ed 1999 Eigogaku Yogo Jiten A Dictionary of Technical Terms of English Linguistics Tokyo Sanseido p 587 Araki Kazuo ed 1999 Eigogaku Yogo Jiten A Dictionary of Technical Terms of English Linguistics Tokyo Sanseido p 249 a b c d Chomsky Noam 1986a Barriers Cambridge MA MIT Press Araki Kazuo ed 1999 Eigogaku Yogo Jiten A Dictionary of Technical Terms of English Linguistics Tokyo Sanseido p 489 Basic English Syntax with Exercises Retrieved 2021 10 22 Haraguchi et al 2016 Zouhoban Chomsky Riron Jiten Kenkyusha s Dictionary of Theoretical Linguistics Enlarged ed Tokyo Kenkyusha pp 125 126 a b Chomsky Noam 1986b Knowledge of Language Its Nature Origin and Use New York Praeger Araki Kazuo ed 1999 Eigogaku Yogo Jiten A Dictionary of Technical Terms of English Linguistics Tokyo Sanseido p 424 Saito Mamoru Naoki Fukui 1998 Order in Phrase Structure and Movement Linguistic Inquiry 29 3 439 474 doi 10 1162 002438998553815 S2CID 57572491 Chomsky Noam 1981 The Logical Structure of Linguistic Theory New York Plenum Press Pollock Jean Yves 1989 Verb Movement Universal Grammar and the Structure of IP Linguistic Inquiry 20 3 365 424 a b c Chomsky Noam 1995 The Minimalist Program Cambridge MA MIT Press Araki Kazuo ed 1999 Eigogaku Yogo Jiten A Dictionary of Technical Terms of English Linguistics Tokyo Sanseido p 16 a b Radford Andrew 2016 Analysing English Sentences Second Edition Cambridge Cambridge University Press pp 86 99 Nakajima Heizo 1996 Complementizer Selection The Linguistic Review 13 2 143 164 doi 10 1515 tlir 1996 13 2 143 S2CID 201091227 Bresnan Joan 1970 On Complementizers Toward a Syntactic Theory of Complement Types Foundations of Language 6 297 321 Bresnan Joan 1972 Theory of Complementation in English Syntax Doctoral dissertation MIT Bresnan Joan 1979 Theory of Complementation in English Syntax New York Garland Chomsky Noam 1973 Conditions on Transformations In Stephen R Anderson and Paul Kiparsky eds A Festschrift for Morris Halle 232 286 New York Holt Rinehart and Winston Baker Mark C 1988 Incorporation A Theory of Grammatical Function Changing Chicago University of Chicago Press Fukui Naoki and Speas Margaret J 1986 Specifiers and Projection MIT Working Papers in Linguistics 8 128 172 Kitagawa Yoshihisa 1986 Subjects in Japanese and English Unpublished doctoral dissertation University of Massachusetts Reprinted in Kitagawa 1994 Routledge Abney Steven P 1987 The English Noun Phrase in Its Sentential Aspect Doctoral dissertation MIT Larson Richard K 1988 On the Double Object Construction Linguistic Inquiry 19 3 335 391 Bowers John 1993 The Syntax of Predication Linguistic Inquiry 24 591 656 Bowers John 2001 Predication In Mark Baltin and Chris Collins eds The Handbook of Contemporary Syntactic Theory 299 333 Blackwell Stowell Timothy 1981 Origins of Phrase Structure Doctoral dissertation MIT a b Syntax I Retrieved 2021 10 23 Chomsky Noam 1972 Studies on Semantics in Generative Grammar The Hague Mouton See also EditLinguistics Natural language Syntax Constituent linguistics Parse tree Head linguistics Complement linguistics Phrase Syntactic category Lexical category Functional category Part of speech Node linguistics Generative grammar Universal Grammar Plato s problem Poverty of the stimulus Transformational grammar Phrase structure grammar Phrase structure rule Standard Theory Extended Standard Theory Revised Extended Standard Theory Government and binding theory C command Principles and parameters approach Minimalist Program Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title X bar theory amp oldid 1138854064 Basic principles, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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