Xbar word how to#

Xʹ-theoretic analysis of constituent “secretly gave a policeman a flower at the police station” The same applies when we attach the adjunct ‘ at the police station’ to the whole constituent again. When we attach the adjunct ‘ secretly’ to the constituent “ gave a policeman a flower” of type Vʹ, the whole constituent is still a bare phrase of type Vʹ. For example, let’s consider the constituent “ secretly gave a policeman a flower at the police station”. We can attach any number of the adjuncts to a constituent of type Xʹ and it won’t change the phrase type. Attachment: a bare phrase of type Xʹ combines with any number (including zero) of adjuncts to become Xʹ formulated as: Xʹ-theoretic analysis of constituent “gave a policeman a flower” We sometimes call a constituent of type Xʹ a bare phrase. ‘ a policeman’ and ‘ a flower’, the whole constituent becomes of bare phrase type Vʹ. When this verb of type V combines with the two complements, i.e. The ditransitive verb ‘ gave’ requires two objects-a direct object and an indirect object. For example, consider the constituent “ gave a policeman a flower”. Note that any constituent of type Xʹ conveys the smallest complete core meaning of the head of type X and it needs not be grammatical. The notation is string concatenation in any order. Complementation: the head of type X combines with any number (including zero) of complements to become Xʹ formulated as: In essense, the theory proposes three steps to help identify the four elements of each constituent. Here, X is actually a variable for any phrase type or part of speech such as N (noun), V (verb), and P (preposition). The name Xʹ (traditionally typesetted as ) comes from an intermediate phrase type that represents the smallest complete core meaning formed by the head of type X and its complements. Xʹ Theory (pronounced ‘ X-bar Theory’) states that each constituent consists of four basic components: head (the core meaning), complement (compulsory element), adjunct (omissible element), and specifier (an omissible phrase marker). This partition is suggested in Xʹ Theory (Chomsky, 1970). We have to disentangle the compulsory from the omissible in order to examine the smallest complete meaning of a constituent. For example, in verb phrase “”, the complement ‘icecream’ is necessary for the verb ‘ate’ while the complement ‘ravenously’ can be omitted. That’s because some elements of the complement are compulsory while the others are omissible. We name that phrase according to its head’s phrase type-the preposition phrase has the preposition as the core meaning, for instance.Īlthough it’s clear to indicate the head of each phrase, the complement part is still quite problematic. Constituents that function similarly are grouped into a single phrase type. Each constituent consists of two components: the head (the core meaning) and the complement (the rest of the constituent that completes the core meaning).

Xbar word how to#

Last time, we learned how to generalize the patterns of constituents with the Phrase Structure Grammar (PSG).