The English Language english language

Delahunty and Garvey

Applying the Pro-Sub Test to the picture on the wall in (32a) we get (33a):

(33) a. Woody admired it.

This is grammatical, so in (32a) the picture on the wall is a unified NP.
When we apply the Pro-Sub Test to the same sequence of words in (32b)
we get (33b):

(33) b. *Woody put it.

This is ungrammatical, showing us that the picture on the wall in (32b) is not
a unified NP.
If we now apply the Pro-Sub Test to the picture in (32b) we get:

(34) Woody put it on the wall.

This is grammatical, showing us that the picture in (32b) is separate from on
the wall.
These patterns of grammaticality lead to the conclusion that (32a) contains
an NP made up of a head with a PP postmodifier and that (32b) contains the
simpler NP the picture followed by a separate PP on the wall.
We can represent these by the following tree structure diagrams:

(32)a’. NP (32)b’. VP

Art N PP V NP PP

the picture on the wall put the picture on the wall

Exercise

1. English contains several different types of pronouns—demonstratives,
   wh-pronouns, and the like—and pronoun substitution tests can be creat-
   ed using any of them. Using wh-pronouns we can create the wh-question
   Test. In this version of the Pro-Sub Test, you replace the sequence under
   analysis with an appropriate question word and turn the sentence into a
   question. Let’s apply this test to (32a,b) just as we applied the original
   Pro-Sub Test. First replace the picture on the wall in (32a) with an appro-
   priate wh- word and turn the result into a question. If the result is gram-
   matical then the sequence is a unified NP. If the result is not grammatical