Glossaryanaphoric 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 different
languages.
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 the
predicate. The complements and the subject, the latter also called an
external 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 the
perfective aspect (different forms of have as in I have read this book.).
They are not generated in the head position of IPs (as opposed to
modal 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 the
constituent 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 SG1
agreement) 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.