Handout ENGL 421: Advanced Syntax 2014

KISII UNIVERSITY

DEPARTMENT OF LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE

Structure Building Mechanisms in Minimalist Syntax

2.0 Introduction

2.1 Bare Phrase Structure

2.1 Phrasal Categories Via Merger Operations

Sentences are structured not only out of words belonging to various word-level
categories, but also out of the phrases belonging to the corresponding set of phrasal
categories. There exist convincing nonsyntactic, syntactic and semantic evidence in
support of the recognition of phrasal categories in natural language. However, we
shall not go into such issues here.
Phrasal categories are phrasal entities like NP (Noun Phrase), VP (Verb Phrase), PP
(Prepositional Phrase), Adv. P (Adverbial Phrase) and Adj P (Adjectival Phrase). The
phrasal category is larger than the lexical category, but it is lower and immediately
dominated by S which is the sentential structure as shown in (1) below:

(1)

As can be observed in (1), S is said to contain two phrasal categories: NP and VP.

In defining the phrasal category, we say that an NP is a phrase that bears a certain
relation to a noun that it contains; a VP is a phrase that bears a certain relation to the
verb it contains; a PP is a phrase that cbeeratrasi n a r elation to a preposition that it
contains, and so on. Thus, the phrasal category is defined in terms of the lexical
category contained in the phrase. The lexical category stands as the head of the
phrasal category, and the phrasal category is designated as the phrasal projection of
the lexical category. Hence we say that every lexical category projects its own phrasal
category.
A sentence can be made up of a noun and a verb as in the following examples:
2. Speed kills
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3. Jesus saves
4. Road closed
In examples (2)-(4) above, the sentences are headed by either a noun or a verb.
However, such sentences are limited and cannot sustain communication. One of the
reasons why this is so is because they are not complete sentences in the right sense of
the term. They are better referred to as phrases.

In this lecture, we shall use only two major phrasal categories for illustrations: the
noun phrase and the verb phrase. We are doing this for two reasons. First, a simple
sentence usually contains the two categories, so, it will be proper to start with the two
types of phrasal categories. Second, since we shall consider phrase and clause types in
the next unit, we shall reserve our discussion of other phrasal categories in lecture 3.
Noun Phrase
As the name implies, a noun phrase is a construction type which has a noun as its
head. A typical noun phrase (NP) could be made up of a noun (head), a determiner
(Det) and an adjective (Adj). This could be represented as in (5):

5. NP (Det) + (Adj) + N

Noun phrases, may appear in various constituent positions. A noun phrase may serve
as the subject, object or complement as in the following examples:

6. The man is a driver (subject)

7. Ngozi bought a bus (object)
8. The books are treasures (complement)

Notice that in (5) above the categories Det and Adj are enclosed in brackets. This
means that they are optional categories. An NP, therefore, may not contain a Det
and/or an Adj, but it must contain an DNe. t erminers and adjectives serve as
modifiers of the noun phrase. A noun phrase, then, may have a determiner as the
modifier of the head (e.g. the man; a man), an adjective as the modifier (e.g. killer
drugs; bad boys), and a determiner and an adjective as the modifiers (e.g. the beautiful
girl). Sometimes, a determiner and more than one adjective could appear as modifiers
(e.g. the tall beautiful girl). The most common sequence in a noun phrase is Det + Adj
+ N (as in: a fine dress; the small girl; the big table).

In line with what we have discussed above, we can represent the structure of the Noun
Phrase using a phrase marker (tree diagram). The following examples can be used as
illustration.

9. a bad boy
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10. the tall beautiful girl

(In these examples, the heads are italicized).

The analysis of the above examples will be as follows:

(9)

(10)

In the two phrase markers, the headship of the N is acknowledged. In addition to the
foregoing, noun heads can be premodified by adjective phrases as in (11):

11. an extremely long journey

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In (11), the head, journey is premodified by a determiner and adjective phrase which
is further analysed as adverb and adjective. Note that within the adjective phrase the
adverb, extremely modifies the adjective, long which is the head of the adjective
phrase. Other examples to illustrate this are:

12. a very foolish black boy

13. these extremely fat girls

The structure of (9) differs a little from that of (11). In (12), adjective phrase very
foolish and the adjective black do not form a single constituent; each modifies the
noun separately as shown in the phrase marker below:

14.

The Adj P consists of a degree adverb and an adjective which is distinct from the
adjective that is closer to the head, N. It follows that the analyses of structures depend
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on the words that form constituents. Those that belong to the same constituent will
have one node label while those that belong to different constituents will have
different node labels.

Apart from premodification, the head nouns can also be postmodified. Usually
prepositional phrases (PP) and subordinate clauses serve as post-modifiers. Consider
the following examples:
15. the tin of oil
16. a book on Ekegusii language
17. the shirt which Mike bought is brown
18. the girl who came is a nurse
In (15) and (16), the heads, tin and book respectively, occur before (and are therefore
post-modified by) the following prepositional phrases as illustrated in the phrase
marker below:

(15)

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(16)

In (17) and (18) relative clauses, which Mike bought and who respectively, are
inserted in front of their NP antecedents in the matrix sentences. A clause is
relativised when an NP within it is identical (and is therefore changed to a relative
pronoun). We can represent (17) and (18) in phrase markers as follows:

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(17)

(18)

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notice that in the two phrase markers (17) and (18), the noun phrases in the matrix
sentences are identical with the noun phrases in the subordinate clauses, hence the
noun phrases in the subordinate clauses are changed to the relative pronouns which (in
17) and who (in 18).

Sometimes, two noun phrases can be conjoined in the same structure. In such
situations, there will be two heads for the phrase. Each head may or may not have its
own satellites but its scope over the adjacent words is limited by the intervening
conjunction as in the following examples:

19. the man and his wife

20. Jack and Jill

These can be represented as follows:

(19.)

(20.)

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From the foregoing, we see that the structure of the noun phrase is complex. The noun
heads in a noun phrase can be premodified by a determiner, adjective, etc., and/or
post-modified by prepositional phrases or subordinate clauses.

5.2 Verb Phrase

A verb phrase is a group of words with the main verb as its head. It consists of a main
verb and one or more auxiliary verbs. It’s structure is determined by the type of verb
that exists in the constituent. For example, a verb can be transitive in which case it
selects (or co-occurs with) an object or two, or intransitive in which case it co-occurs
with or without adverbials. Consider the following examples:
1. He threw the ball (transitive)
2. She laughed (intransitive)
The lexical or main verb in a verb phrase is obligatory while the auxiliary is optional.

Verb phrase can expand as an obligatory V followed by either an optional NP and an

optional Adv P or PP. In other words, the verb can either be followed by a PP to
account for a particular sort followed by NP or Adv P to account for other structures.
Thus, we can have such phrase structure rules as:
3. VP V (NP) (Adv P)
4. VP V (PP)
These two rules can be collapsed as (5):
5. VP V (NP) (Adv. P)
PP
A verb phrase can occur between the NP and the complement as in the following
examples:
6. He sees the moon
7. He is reading a book
8. She must have written a book
9. The book must have been bought by him
10. The boy is reading an interesting book

The main function of the verb phrase is to restrict or qualify the general meaning of
the main verb. In English, this is done through the process of inflections. There are
four such inflections that can be attached to the verb:

(a) the third person singular (-s) e.g. drives, eats

(b) the past tense (-ed) e.g. laughed, talked
(c) the past participle (-n) e.g. driven, taken.
(d) the present participle (-ing) e.g. driving, singing.

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In English, special function words called auxiliaries help to build verb phrases in
order to express fine shades of meaning not covered by the inflections. These shades
of meaning include perfective, mood, and active voice. Perfective is expressed by the
auxiliary have; mood by the auxiliary might and active voice by the absence of the
specific indicator of passive – the auxiliary be with the Vn form of the main verb.
From the foregoing, we see that the verb phrase consists of a main verb and other
elements. The verb serves as the head of the VP. Categories that complement the verb
are also identified as the phrasal categories of their respective word classes.

5.3 Merger Operations

On the basis of what we now know about NP and VP, let us consider how they work
together to form clauses and sentences. As a first step, let us consider the mini
dialogue below:
1. A: What is Emily planning to do?
B: Buy houses
As speaker A’s reply illustrates, the simplest way of forming a phrase is by combining
two words. For example, by combining the word buy and the word houses, we get the
phrase buy houses. The grammatical properties of phrases are determined by one of
the words in the phrase. Thus, when a verb like buy is combined with a noun like
houses, the resulting phrase buy houses seems to have verb-like properties (as
opposed to noun-like properties, for instance). This can be seen from the fact that the
phrase buy houses can occupy the same range of positions as a verb like react, and
hence, for example, occur after the infinitive particle to:
2. (a) The woman has the right to react
(b) Emily has the right to buy houses
Conversely, buy houses cannot occupy the kind of positions occupied by a plural noun
such as houses as we see in (3):
3. (a) Houses are very expensive in Nairobi
(b) *Buy houses are very expensive in Nairobi
Thus, it becomes clear that the grammatical properties of the phrase like buy houses
are determined by the verb buy and not by the noun houses. We can then say that the
verb buy is the head of the phrase buy houses, and that the phrase buy houses is a
projection (i.e. a phrasal expansion) of the verb buy. Since the head of the phrase is
the verb buy, the phrase buy houses is a VP. If we use the labeled bracketing
technique troep resent the phrase, we have (4):
4. [VP (V buy) (N houses)]
We observe from (4) that the phrase buy houses is a VP, and that it comprises the verb
(V) buy and the noun (N) houses. The verb buy is the head of the phrase, and the noun
houses is the complement of the verb buy. The operation by which the two words are
combined to form a phrase is called merger.
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We can also represent the structure in (4) with a labeled tree diagram as in (5):
5.

.
The tree diagram is equivalent to a labeled bracketing in the sense that the two
provide us with precisely the same information about the structure of the phrase. The
difference between a labeled bracketing and a tree diagram is purely notational: while
each category is represented by a single node (point) in a tree diagram, a pair of
brackets is used in a labeled bracketing. Apart from this, representing a long phrase
lwabitehl e d bracketing will be confusing.

From the foregoing, we can claim that all phrases are formed in essentially the same
way as the phrase in (5), namely, by merging two categories to form a larger category.
However, it should be noted that not all phrases are formed from just two words.
Consider the following mini dialogue:
6. A: What is Emily’s next plan?
B: To buy cars
Speaker B’s response in (6) is formed by merging the infinitive particle to with the
verb phrase buy cars. What then is the head of the resulting phrase to buy cars? There
seems to be evidence that indicates that the head is the infinitive particle to, and that
the resulting phrase to buy cars is an infinitive phrase (IP). The evidence is that the
strings such as to buy cars have a different distribution from verb phrases as shown in
examples (7) and (8) below:
7. (a) She wants [to buy cars]
(b) *She wants [buy cars]
8. (a) She should [buy cars]
(b) *She should [to buy cars]
If we assume that buy cars is a verb phrase while to buy cars is an infinitive phrase,
we can then account for the constructions in (7) and (8) by saying that wants is the
kind of word which requires an infinitive phrase after it as its complement, while
should is the kind of word that requires a verb phrase as its complement.

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The infinitive phrase to buy cars is formed by merging the infinitive particle to with
the verb phrase buy cars as represented in the tree diagram below (the infinitive
particle is denoted as I in the diagram):
(9)

In (9), IP is headed by I (to) and the VP, buy cars is the complement of to.

From our discussions so far, we see that we can build complex structures by
successively merging pairs of categories to form even larger phrases. For example, by
merging the IP to buy cars with the verb save, we can form the phrase save to buy
cars. This phrase is headed by the verb save because it can be used after the infinitive
particle to in sentences like those in (2) above:
10. Emeka has the right to save to buy cars.
The phrase can be represented as in (11):
11.

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The phrase in (11) introduces us to an important concept in grammar, called recursion.
Going by our analysis, save to buy cars is a VP which itself contains another VP, buy
cars. It is easy to see that fauprpthliecra t ion of merger will yield a larger VP, for
example, expect to save to buy cars that include the VP in (11). We thus see that this
simple operation of merger as a core operation in the theory of grammar, deals with
the fact that English, like any other language, has a potentially infinite number of
sentences.

5.4 CONCLUSION
In this unit, we have discussed phrasal categories, and used the Noun Phrase and Verb
Phrase to show how lexical categories build up phrasal categories. We have also seen
how phrasal categories can be expanded into larger phrasal categories via merger
operations. The fact that we can continue to prolong phrasal categories in this fashion
gives credence to the recursive nature of sentences in a language.
5.6 SUMMARY
In this unit, you have learnt:
• what phrasal categories are;
• what Noun Phrase and Verb Phrase are and how they are structured; and
• what merger operation is and how it operates.

REFERENCES/FURTHER READINGS

Radford, Andrew et al. (1999). Linguistics: An Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press.

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