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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.
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.
The X-bar theory is a theory that attempts to resolve these issues by assuming the mold or template phrasal structure of "XP".
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.
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.
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:
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.
For example, the NP linguistics in the sentence John studies linguistics has the structure in 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 one adopts the PSR. [13] (This resolves the second issue above.) In the meantime, one needs to be wary of when such empty positions are representationally omitted as in 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 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.
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]
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.)
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 have the structures in Figure 8 and Figure 9, respectively.
ジョンが
John-ga
John-NOM
リンゴを
ringo-o
apple-ACC
食べた
tabe-ta
eat-PAST
'John ate an apple'
Finally 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.
Under the PSR, the structure of S (sentence) is illustrated as follows. [7] [8] [24]
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]
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.
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]
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.
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]
In this derivation, the I-to-C movement is an instance of subject-auxiliary inversion (SAI), or more generally, head movement . [FN 9]
The PSR has the shortcoming of being incapable of capturing sentence ambiguities.
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. [43] Under the PSR model, the sentence above is subject to the following two parsing rules.
The sentence's structure under these PSRs would be as in 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.
Thus, the X-bar theory resolves the fourth issue mentioned in § Background as well. 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 [44] ), and Revised Extended Standard Theory (Chomsky, 1981 [13] ).
In linguistics, syntax is the study of how words and morphemes combine to form larger units such as phrases and sentences. Central concerns of syntax include word order, grammatical relations, hierarchical sentence structure (constituency), agreement, the nature of crosslinguistic variation, and the relationship between form and meaning (semantics). There are numerous approaches to syntax that differ in their central assumptions and goals.
A syntactic category is a syntactic unit that theories of syntax assume. Word classes, largely corresponding to traditional parts of speech, are syntactic categories. In phrase structure grammars, the phrasal categories are also syntactic categories. Dependency grammars, however, do not acknowledge phrasal categories.
In grammar, a phrase—called expression in some contexts—is a group of words or singular word acting as a grammatical unit. For instance, the English expression "the very happy squirrel" is a noun phrase which contains the adjective phrase "very happy". Phrases can consist of a single word or a complete sentence. In theoretical linguistics, phrases are often analyzed as units of syntactic structure such as a constituent. There is a difference between the common use of the term phrase and its technical use in linguistics. In common usage, a phrase is usually a group of words with some special idiomatic meaning or other significance, such as "all rights reserved", "economical with the truth", "kick the bucket", and the like. It may be a euphemism, a saying or proverb, a fixed expression, a figure of speech, etc.. In linguistics, these are known as phrasemes.
Phrase structure rules are a type of rewrite rule used to describe a given language's syntax and are closely associated with the early stages of transformational grammar, proposed by Noam Chomsky in 1957. They are used to break down a natural language sentence into its constituent parts, also known as syntactic categories, including both lexical categories and phrasal categories. A grammar that uses phrase structure rules is a type of phrase structure grammar. Phrase structure rules as they are commonly employed operate according to the constituency relation, and a grammar that employs phrase structure rules is therefore a constituency grammar; as such, it stands in contrast to dependency grammars, which are based on the dependency relation.
A parse tree or parsing tree is an ordered, rooted tree that represents the syntactic structure of a string according to some context-free grammar. The term parse tree itself is used primarily in computational linguistics; in theoretical syntax, the term syntax tree is more common.
Lexical semantics, as a subfield of linguistic semantics, is the study of word meanings. It includes the study of how words structure their meaning, how they act in grammar and compositionality, and the relationships between the distinct senses and uses of a word.
Government and binding is a theory of syntax and a phrase structure grammar in the tradition of transformational grammar developed principally by Noam Chomsky in the 1980s. This theory is a radical revision of his earlier theories and was later revised in The Minimalist Program (1995) and several subsequent papers, the latest being Three Factors in Language Design (2005). Although there is a large literature on government and binding theory which is not written by Chomsky, Chomsky's papers have been foundational in setting the research agenda.
In linguistics, the minimalist program is a major line of inquiry that has been developing inside generative grammar since the early 1990s, starting with a 1993 paper by Noam Chomsky.
In linguistics, branching refers to the shape of the parse trees that represent the structure of sentences. Assuming that the language is being written or transcribed from left to right, parse trees that grow down and to the right are right-branching, and parse trees that grow down and to the left are left-branching. The direction of branching reflects the position of heads in phrases, and in this regard, right-branching structures are head-initial, whereas left-branching structures are head-final. English has both right-branching (head-initial) and left-branching (head-final) structures, although it is more right-branching than left-branching. Some languages such as Japanese and Turkish are almost fully left-branching (head-final). Some languages are mostly right-branching (head-initial).
The term phrase structure grammar was originally introduced by Noam Chomsky as the term for grammar studied previously by Emil Post and Axel Thue. Some authors, however, reserve the term for more restricted grammars in the Chomsky hierarchy: context-sensitive grammars or context-free grammars. In a broader sense, phrase structure grammars are also known as constituency grammars. The defining character of phrase structure grammars is thus their adherence to the constituency relation, as opposed to the dependency relation of dependency grammars.
Principles and parameters is a framework within generative linguistics in which the syntax of a natural language is described in accordance with general principles and specific parameters that for particular languages are either turned on or off. For example, the position of heads in phrases is determined by a parameter. Whether a language is head-initial or head-final is regarded as a parameter which is either on or off for particular languages. Principles and parameters was largely formulated by the linguists Noam Chomsky and Howard Lasnik. Many linguists have worked within this framework, and for a period of time it was considered the dominant form of mainstream generative linguistics.
In generative grammar, non-configurational languages are languages characterized by a flat phrase structure, which allows syntactically discontinuous expressions, and a relatively free word order.
In theoretical linguistics, a distinction is made between endocentric and exocentric constructions. A grammatical construction is said to be endocentric if it fulfils the same linguistic function as one of its parts, and exocentric if it does not. The distinction reaches back at least to Bloomfield's work of the 1930s, who based it on terms by Pāṇini and Patañjali in Sanskrit grammar. Such a distinction is possible only in phrase structure grammars, since in dependency grammars all constructions are necessarily endocentric.
In linguistics, antisymmetry is a syntactic theory presented in Richard S. Kayne's 1994 monograph The Antisymmetry of Syntax. It asserts that grammatical hierarchies in natural language follow a universal order, namely specifier-head-complement branching order. The theory builds on the foundation of the X-bar theory. Kayne hypothesizes that all phrases whose surface order is not specifier-head-complement have undergone syntactic movements that disrupt this underlying order. Others have posited specifier-complement-head as the basic word order.
In linguistics, the projection principle is a stipulation proposed by Noam Chomsky as part of the phrase structure component of generative-transformational grammar. The projection principle is used in the derivation of phrases under the auspices of the principles and parameters theory.
In linguistics, a small clause consists of a subject and its predicate, but lacks an overt expression of tense. Small clauses have the semantic subject-predicate characteristics of a clause, and have some, but not all, properties of a constituent. Structural analyses of small clauses vary according to whether a flat or layered analysis is pursued. The small clause is related to the phenomena of raising-to-object, exceptional case-marking, accusativus cum infinitivo, and object control.
Merge is one of the basic operations in the Minimalist Program, a leading approach to generative syntax, when two syntactic objects are combined to form a new syntactic unit. Merge also has the property of recursion in that it may be applied to its own output: the objects combined by Merge are either lexical items or sets that were themselves formed by Merge. This recursive property of Merge has been claimed to be a fundamental characteristic that distinguishes language from other cognitive faculties. As Noam Chomsky (1999) puts it, Merge is "an indispensable operation of a recursive system ... which takes two syntactic objects A and B and forms the new object G={A,B}" (p. 2).
In linguistics, locality refers to the proximity of elements in a linguistic structure. Constraints on locality limit the span over which rules can apply to a particular structure. Theories of transformational grammar use syntactic locality constraints to explain restrictions on argument selection, syntactic binding, and syntactic movement.
The lexicalist hypothesis is a hypothesis proposed by Noam Chomsky in which he claims that syntactic transformations only can operate on syntactic constituents. It says that the system of grammar that assembles words is separate and different from the system of grammar that assembles phrases out of words.
In formal syntax, a node is a point in a tree diagram or syntactic tree that can be assigned a syntactic category label.