Glossary
A-movement: argument-movement, the syntactically motivated movement ofarguments from argument positions to argument positions. The Casemotivated movement of DPs in passive and raising structures is a typical example for this movement type. See also A©-movement.
A©-movement: A-bar movement, non-argument movement, the movement ofarguments or non-arguments to non-argument positions, e.g. wh- movement or focus fronting.
abstract Case: being Case-marked is assumed to be a universal property of overt nominal expressions. Whenever there is no visible marking, we assume there to be invisible Case on the given nominal expression.
abstract light verb: the head position of a vP can be occupied by aphonetically empty light verb.
accusative Case: the case of DPs appearing after verbs, prepositions and visible subjects of infinitival clauses. In English it is visible only on certainpronouns, e.g. him/her.
active voice: a structure with no passivisation, where the subject of the clause does not originate in the object position but in the specifier position of the vP. Compare with passive voice, see also voice.
adjacency: according to traditional analyses Case assigner and Case assignee must be adjacent, next to each other. This accounts for why the sentence *Mary speaks fluently English is ungrammatical.
adjective: a constituent with the feature composition: [+N, +V, –F] modifying nouns, e.g. mad in mad cow. These constituents cannot have nominal complements, their semantically nominal complement must appear as aPrepositional Phrase with the rescue strategy of of-insertion.
adjective phrase (AP): a phrase headed by an adjective. In the complement position we can find PPs and finite and non-finite CPs. DPs andexceptional clauses are excluded since adjectives are not Case assigners. APs are complements of DegPs.
adjunct: a constituent not selected by a head.
adjunct rule: one of the three rules of X-bar theory, a recursive rule of the form Xn → Xn, Y/YP
This rule states that an adjunct can be adjoined to the head, theintermediate projection or the maximal projection. Heads can be adjoined to heads, phrases can be adjoined to the intermediate or maximal projection.
The constituent an adjunct is adjoined to is doubled. The comma in the rule indicates that the order of the two constituents is not fixed.
adjunction: a type of movement where a new position is formed as a result of the movement creating an adjunction structure, like the (simplified) movement of the PP in the following tree structure representation where the Snode is doubled:
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S |
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PP |
S |
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on the shelf1 |
DP |
VP |
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Petra |
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V© |
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V |
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PP |
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t1 |
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put |
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adverb: a constituent with the feature composition [+N, +V, –F] used to modify a verb (as in everything went smoothly) or a sentence (as in Unfortunately, I did not pass the first exam). In this approach adverbs and adjectives belong to the same category, the difference between them being what they modify.
affix: a bound morpheme added to the beginning or end of a word, a prefix or a suffix.
Affix Lowering: the downward movement of the bound inflectional morpheme -s, -ed or the zero inflectional morpheme onto the verbal head. This is the only movement type where we move a constituent down. Assuming downward movement to take place is necessary in the traditional framework because it is assumed that lexical verbs in English cannot leave the VP and this way we can also account for the order of sentence medial adverbs relative to the verb: She often invites her friends.
agent: one of the thematic or theta-roles, where the argument deliberately performs an action, as Jamie in Jamie sang a song or Robert in Robert kicked the cat. In terms of the UTAH the agentive theta-role is assigned to the specifier position of vP, similarly to experiencer arguments.
agglutination: stems are allowed to support more than one bound morpheme and hence there are complex words being formed from a series of inflectional morphemes.
agreement: a syntactic process whereby certain constituents must share certain features, e.g. subjects must agree with the inflection on the verb in person and number.
aktionsart: see lexical aspect.
ambiguity: a structure is ambiguous if it can be interpreted in more than one way. We differentiate lexical ambiguity from structural ambiguity.
anaphor: a reflexive (e.g. himself) or a reciprocal (e.g. each other). A DP without independent reference needing an antecedent.
anaphoric operator: an operator that behaves like an anaphor, one that is referentially dependent on another constituent in the sentence, like a wh- element in relative clauses.
antecedent: a constituent another constituent without independent reference (such as an anaphor or a trace) takes reference from/is coreferential with. In the sentence ‘Mary is enjoying herself’ the antecedent of herself is Mary. We indicate coreference with coindexation.
AP: see Adjective Phrase
arbitrariness: based on the phonological form of a certain word we cannot predict its meaning. The same word can mean different things in differentlanguages.
arbitrary reference: in certain contexts PRO does not need an antecedent, it has a generic interpretation similarly to the pronoun one:
[CP PRO to be] or [CP PRO not to be], that is the question
arguments: the participants minimally involved in an action defined by thepredicate. The complements and the subject, the latter also called anexternal argument.
aspect: a semantic property of verbs expressing how a certain event is viewed. See lexical aspect and grammatical aspect.
aspectual auxiliary verb: those dummy auxiliary verbs that participate in forming the progressive (different forms of be as in They are waiting.) or theperfective aspect (different forms of have as in I have read this book.). They are not generated in the head position of IPs (as opposed tomodal auxiliaries) but in vP, and can undergo upward movement to the head position of IP. Feature composition: [–N, +V]
aspectual morpheme: the morphemes -ing and -en responsible for the progressive and perfective aspectual meanings, respectively.
asterisk: a) a symbol used to indicate an ungrammatical structure.
b) in a rewrite rule it indicates that there can be any number of theconstituent marked with this symbol
bare infinitive: an infinitive without to, a non-finite verb form appearing after auxiliaries, not to be confused with the base form of the verb which can also be finite.
barrier: certain nodes in a tree form barriers to government, they ‘protect’ their constituents from government from the outside. A governor may be able to govern up to a barrier, but not through a barrier. Case assignment is impossible through a barrier. CPs are barriers to government.
base form: the (at least apparently) uninflected form of the verb. it can be finite (like in I like chocolate where a zero form of the inflection indicates SG1agreement) or non-finite (like in I may invite Jamie where a verb form also called the bare infinitive is used, no inflection whatsoever is present on the verb, the inflectional head position is occupied by the modal auxiliary may).
base position: the position where a constituent first appears in the generative process.
base-generate: to insert constituents into a position reflecting the basic semantic relationships. The arguments of the verb appear within the Verb Phrase but they may be forced to leave that position by different principles ofgrammar.
binary features: abstract representations of a contrasting linguistic unit such as [±Tense]. These units can have one of the two values + or –.
binder: a nominal expression that gives reference to another nominal expression without independent reference. In the sentence Mary knows that she will pass the exam the constituent Mary can be the binder of the pronoun she (mind you, it is not necessarily so, the interpretation of the pronoun can be some other female character determined by the context)
binding: an element that can be coreferential with another element (the most typically pronouns and anaphors) is bound by that element. This relationship is called binding. In the sentence Peter and Mary love each other the constituent Peter and Mary binds each other.
binding domain: the domain within which anaphors must be, pronouns cannot bebound. E.g. in the sentence Peter knows him the constituent Peter cannot be coreferent with the pronoun him since they are in the same domain. In the sentence Peter knows himself the anaphor has to be coreferent with Peter since it is the only available antecedent for it in the same domain as required by the binding principles.
binding principles: principles that refer to the interpretation of nominal expressions:
a)An anaphor must have a binder within the binding domain
b)A pronominal cannot have a binder within the binding domain
c)An R-expression must be free everywhere
bound morpheme: a morpheme that has to attach to another morpheme, it cannot stand on its own, e.g. -ed, -ment, un-. See also free morpheme
bracketed representation: a representation of grammatical structure by bracketing those constituents that belong together, an alternative to tree diagrams.
branch: lines connecting the nodes in tree-structure representations.
Burzio’s Generalisation: verbs which assign no theta-role to their subjects do not assign accusative Case to their objects.
canonical subject position: the specifier position of the IP. This is the position where subjects are assigned Case. The canonical subject position, however, is not equivalent with the base position of the subject, as was assumed for a long time, see the VP-Internal Subject Hypothesis.
Case: see abstract Case and morphological case.
Case assigner: a head that has the ability to assign Case, like V(erb),P(reposition) and finite I(nflection).
Case avoidance principle: Clauses avoid Case positions. Case Filter: every overt DP must be assigned abstract Case.
Case position: a position where ( nominative or accusative) Case can be assigned.
Case Theory: one of the modules of GB defining Case-assignment to DPs.
category variable: in X-bar theory and the rules of X-bar theory X is a category variable that can be substituted by any of the categories. XP can beNP, VP, PP, DP, etc.
central determiner: traditionally these are determiners following pre-determiners and preceding post-determiners. In GB central determiners occupy the head position of DP this way defining the definiteness of the phrase (e.g. a man/the man)
chain: a moved element and its associated traces functioning as a single object made up of several parts. See also head of the chain, foot of the chain.
clause: a structure containing a (visible or invisible) subject and a predicate. cognate object: objects that are strongly related to the verb (mostly intransitive),
usually they repeat the meaning of the verb: smile an evil smile, live a happy life.
coindexation: an indication of coreference between two constituents by giving them the same subscript index symbol. In Peteri knows that Mary likes himi the i index indicates that in the sentence him is to be understood as referring to Peter, though in theory it could also be understood as referring to a third party previously mentioned.
comment: it forms a full sentence together with a topic. The comment is the new information in the information structure of the sentence.
comparative form of adjectives: this form is used for comparison to a higher (or in the case of less lower) degree when two constituents are compared: He is taller than I am. This sentence contains inflectional comparative, but there is another, periphrastic way of comparison: This car is more expensive than that one.
complement: an argument which follows the verb, or, more generally, a phrase selected by a head.
complement rule: one of the three rules of X-bar theory of the following form: X©→ X YP
which states that the intermediate category X©can be rewritten as X (the head) and YP (the complement, always a full phrase of some kind), in this order.
complementary distribution: two constituents are in complementary distribution if one of them never appears in any of the environments where the other appears. If two constituents are in complementary distribution it indicates that they compete for the same structural position. E.g. we cannot have both an inflectional ending and a modal auxiliary in the same clause as these two occupy the head position within an IP, thus the ungrammaticality of *She can dances.
complementiser: a constituent introducing a sentential complement. The complementisers in English are that, if ,and for. They occupy the head position of CP and have selectional restrictions on the force andfiniteness of the clause. Feature composition: [+F, –N, –V]
complementiser phrase (CP): a phrase headed by one of the three complementisers that, if or for (in structures like It is important [for Jim to pass this exam]
where for is used not as a preposition but as a prepositional complementiser.) The complement of a CP is an IP, the specifier position is occupied by moved wh-elements or whether.
complex transitive verb: a verb with a nominal and a prepositional complement, e.g. put (the newspaper on the desk)
compound noun: two nouns put together to form a single noun, e.g. homework. constituency test: a test for deciding whether a certain string of words is a
constituent or not, e.g. coordination, preposing, extraposition,substitution etc.
constituent: a linguistic expression that functions as a unit in grammatical structure. A group of words that undergo syntactic processes together.
control: a term related to the interpretation of PRO. E.g. in the sentence I promised [PRO to visit her] the constituent I controls PRO, gives reference to it. See also subject control, object control, arbitrary reference.
coordinating conjunction: elements connecting clauses or phrases on the same level: and, or and but
coordination: one of the constituency tests where two elements of the same type are put together to form a single element using a coordinating conjunction. The coordinated element acts like the two coordinated elements would individually.
coreference: when two or more referential phrases pick out the same entity in the world they are said to be coreferential. Coreference is indicated by
coindexation: Peteri thinks that hei has every reason to be proud of himselfi.
count noun: a noun that shows number distinction, e.g. one book/two books. covert: invisible, without phonological realisation but still having grammatical
function
CP: see Complementiser Phrase dative alternate: see dative construction.
dative construction: an alternative to the verb–indirect object–direct object construction where the indirect object appears in the form of a PP: I gave an apple to Peter as opposed to I gave Peter an apple.
daughter: an immediate constituent of a node which then is the mother node. declarative clause: a positive or negative statement mainly used to convey
information.
D(eep)-structure: the structure before movement takes place, a representation ofthematic relations.
defining relative clause: see restrictive relative clause.
definite determiner: a determiner like the or this that turns a nominal expression into a definite DP.
definiteness: a category expressing whether a nominal expression is identifiable or not. In the sentences A man was walking in the park with a dog. The man sat on a bench and the dog ran away first we have indefinite individuals but in the second sentence they can already be identified from the context. Identification can also come from the situation or our knowledge of the world (the Sun).
DegP: the functional projection on top of APs (similarly to DPs taking NP complements) hosting degree modifiers like the superlative and comparativemorpheme.
degree adverb: a subclass of adverbs which specifies the degree to which some property applies, e.g. very and extremely. Feature composition: [+F, +N, +V]
derivational morpheme: it forms a new word from an existing one in the lexicon with its own lexical properties. The meaning of the new word may differ from the original word. Lexical process
derived noun: a noun derived from a word belonging to another word category. Seedeverbal noun.
determiner: the head of a Determiner Phrase, a closed class item taking an NP complement defining its definiteness. Feature composition: [+F, –N, +V] determiner phrase (DP): a phrase headed by a central determiner or the possessive ’s morpheme. The complement of a DP is an NP, the specifier the DP
the possessive ending attaches to.
deverbal noun: a noun derived from a verb, e.g. a bite from the verb to bite.
direct object: the DP complement of a verb most often bearing the theta-role ofpatient or theme.
distribution: the set of positions that the grammar determines to be possible for a given category. Words that distribute in the same way will belong to the same categories, words that distribute differently will belong to different categories.
ditransitive verb: a verb with two nominal complements, e.g. give. do-insertion: see do-support.
do-support: a last resort operation when neither the auxiliary nor the lexical verb can move. We find it in the following structures:
(a)the VP has fronted:[crash the car] he did
(b)the inflection itself has inverted in a question: did he – crash the car?
(c)there is a negative between the I and the VP: he did not use the
windscreen wipers
double-object construction: the special construction when the verb give selects twoobjects, an indirect object and a direct object, in this order, like in the sentence Peter gave Mary a teddy bear.
Doubly Filled COMP Filter: no CP can have both an overt specifier and an overt complementiser generated in C.
DP: see Determiner Phrase.
DP-movement: the movement of DPs in passive and raising structures. In both cases the DP is base-generated in a position where it cannot be assignedCase. In terms of the Case Filter it has to move to a position where it can be Case-marked.
dummy auxiliary: a certain form of the auxiliary do, its main function is to support the tense morpheme when it cannot appear on the main verb
echo question: a question in which a previously uttered sentence is more or less repeated and a part of it that was either not heard or not believed is replaced
by a wh-element. The meaning is quite clear: it is a request for someone to repeat or confirm the previous statement.
A:At the exam, I was asked about Zantedeschia.
B:You were asked about what?
ECM: see Exceptional Case-marking.
E-language: the language that is external to the speaker – the infinite set of expressions defined by the I-language – that linguists have access to when formulating their grammars
embedded clause: a clause that is part of a larger constituent (I know [that you like him], the man [that you like].
endocentric structure: one that gets its properties from an element that it contains, this element can function by itself as a whole phrase. Such phrases have a head that determines their categorial nature. It is a requirement in X-bar theory that phrases be endocentric. A noun projects a noun phrase, a verb a verb phrase etc.
ergative language: a language where the subject of an intransitive verb and theobject of a transitive verb have the same Case form.
ergative verb: a verb that can appear in a VP either (a) with a single themeargument functioning as the subject of the clause (The ship sank), similarly to unaccusative structures or (b) in the presence of a light verb together with an agentive subject (They sank the ship), when the structure is similar to the structure of transitive verbs. As opposed to unaccusative verbs, ergative verbs cannot appear in the existential there construction (unless they are ambiguous between the two readings), and they are typically verbs expressing a change of state, like break, explode, grow.
event structure: verbs can express simple or complex events. Event structure describes what sub-events an event expressed by a certain verb is made up of. This has an effect on the syntactic organisation of elements within theVP. There is supposed to be an isomorphism between event structure and the structure of the VP: a VP breaks up into sub-vPs/VPs in a one-to-one correspondence with the sub-events.
Exceptional Case-marking (ECM): in the normal case the Case assigner and theconstituent which is assigned Case are in the same clause. There are structures, however, where it is impossible, e. g. in I believe him to be disappointed. The embedded clause contains non-finite Inflection, which is not a Case assigner. The only option for the subject DP to be assigned Case is by an outside governor, hence the term, ECM. The verb believe is a potential Case assigner since it can also take a DP complement to which it assigns accusative Case: I believe him.
exceptional clause: clauses selected by exceptional verbs such as believe. What makes them exceptional is that the clauses introduced by them are notCPs as clauses in general are, but IPs. Evidence for this comes from ungrammatical structures like *I believe for him to be the best. It is the insertion of the prepositional complementiser that makes the sentence ungrammatical indicating that the position to host it (head of CP) is not projected, the clause is not a CP.
exceptional verb: verbs selecting not a CP but an IP complement when their complement is clausal. The most typical representative is believe, which is an exceptional verb when it takes an infinitival complement (when its clausal complement is finite, it is a full CP).
existential there-construction: a structure where there is used as an expletive, introducing a nominal expression as in There were three girls waiting for me. In such structures the emphasis is on the existence (or non-existence) of the situation/the participants.
exocentric structure: one that contains no element that can have the same function as the whole phrase, it appears to have properties that are independent from the elements it contains. E.g. small clauses for a long time were assumed to be exocentric structures.
experiencer: one of the thematic or theta-roles where the argument experiences some physical or mental state, like Mary in Mary was afraid of dogs. The experiencer theta-role is assigned in the specifier position of vP, similarly to the agent role. If both an agent and an experiencer argument are selected by the verb there are two vPs projected and the experiencer occupies the specifier position of the lower vP.
expletive subject: a subject without reference, its presence is merely required by theEPP. Expletive subjects have no theta-roles but they do receive Case from finite Inflection. The expletives in the English language are there introducing nominal expressions as in There lived a cruel dragon in the forest and it introducing clauses as in It occurred to me too late that he had not been invited. Both there and it have referential uses too!
extended projection: a Verb Phrase has an extended projection into IP and CP in a clause. Similarly to it a noun phrase has an extended projection into DP which may further project into a PP.
Extended Projection Principle (EPP): every clause must have a (visible or invisible) subject.
external argument: the subject, occupying a position external to the verb, [Spec, IP] extraction site: the position from which elements move.
extraposition: a constituent ( PP, CP) moved from the phrase where it belongs to a sentence final position: The rumour t has been circulating [that we will have an oral exam this semester].
[±F]: one of the three basic binary features on which all categories can be defined. With the help of these features we can explain why we have the categories that we do and also describe how these categories are related. With the help of the three binary features we can predict what kinds of categories are possible in human language, we can give an exclusive list of them. [±F] is a feature used to distinguish between functional and thematic categories. [–F] categories have thematic content and [+F] categories do not. The categories with [+F] feature are the following: inflections,complementisers, determiners and degree adverbs. Certain categories are unspecified for the [±F] feature, see underspecification.
finite clause: a clause containing a finite verb.
finite verb form: a verb form that is inflected for tense in a visible or invisible form. In English this inflection is visible only in the past tense or in SG3 in the present tense.
finiteness: whether a constituent (a clause or a verb) is understood as finite or non-finite.
focus: the stressed element in a sentence that carries new information.
focus fronting: focus can be indicated either by stress alone or by movement in which latter case we speak about focus fronting, as the constituent that bears focus stress moves to the front of the clause, as in Peter I wouldn©t trust
foot of a chain: the lowest position an element has been moved from containing thetrace of the moved constituent; the extraction site of the moved element. force: the distinction between a declarative and an interrogative interpretation
of sentences.
free morpheme: a morpheme that can stand on its own, e.g. flower, walk. See also bound morpheme
functional category: categories without lexical content, fulfilling some grammatical function in a given structure: inflections, determiners, degree adverbs and complementisers.
gender: the contrast between masculine and feminine, or (in some languages) animate and inanimate nominal expressions.
generative grammar: a grammar containing rules with the help of which we can generate all and only the well-formed expressions of a language (therefore excluding the ungrammatical structures).
genitive Case: in traditional terminology the ’s ending on a nominal expression (e.g. in Peter’s dog) is assumed to be the marker of genitive Case.
gerund: a verb form with a noun-like role in the sentence retaining characteristics of both verbs and nouns as in [The patient©s refusing of the medicine] worried the doctors.
government: a structural relationship between a head and its complement. Government is a necessary condition for case-assignment.
Government and Binding Theory (GB): a version of Noam Chomsky©s universalgrammar according to which linguistic expressions, though infinite in number, can be generated with the help of a restricted number of rules. Grammatical expressions are the result of several interacting modules within this system.
gradable adjective: an adjective that has comparative and superlative forms, e.g. nice/nicer/nicest.
grammar: (a) a (finite) set of rules which tell us how to recognise the infinite number of expressions that constitute the language that we speak. (b) a linguistic hypothesis about these rules.
grammatical aspect: refers to how the event is viewed as a process: whether it has stopped ( perfect aspect) or is still going on ( progressive aspect).
head: a word level or zero level category. It projects its properties to the phrase (XP) via the X©, so that the category of X is the same as X©and XP. The head defines the properties of the phrase. Heads also impose restrictions on the type of the complement that can follow them.
