Exercise 14The adjunct PP is merged with the structure by making the X' level recursive as the
result of the application of Adjunct Rule as in (4).
(4) Adjunct Rule 2: X' Æ X'. YP
After combining the rules in (2) and (4) we get the structure in (5).(5) N'
N' PP(adjunct)
N YP(complement)
teacher of English
There are two issues at stake here. One is that rule (2) is obligatory while rule (4) is
optional. The second is that the application of rules (2) and (4) is ordered. First rule (2)
must be applied. and then rule (4). In fact X-bar theory does not allow a head to be
combined with an adjunct phrase. Rule 3 as in (5) is unavailable.
(6) *X' Æ X YP (where YP is interpreted as an adjunct)
The other possibility is to allow for the adjunct to be able to intervene between the
head and the complement as in the NP in sentence (1a) and still maintain the rules of
X-bar theory as in (2) and (4) (excluding (6)) is to allow the branches of the tree to
cross. It is again impossible. Therefore X-bar theory predicts that sentence (1a) is ill
formed.
(ii) Sentence (1b) is problematic for the same reason as sentence (1a). The order
of the elements in the VP drives too fast her car makes the sentence ungrammatical.
drive is a two-place predicate, it has a agent subject and a patient theme. The lexical
entry for the verb drive:
(7) drive cat: [–F, –N, +V]
-grid: <agent,patient>
subcat: nominal.
As can be seen in (7) the verb has an object complement specified in its lexical
entry, but no adverbial is present in the lexical specification, therefore the adverb
phrase functions as an adjunct in the VP. The order of the constituents suggests that
first the head and the adjunct are merged as it is in (6), then the complement is merged
with the new structure, but as we have seen in (2), this is not possible. As has been
shown earlier, X-bar theory does not permit branches to cross, hence the impossibility
of VP structure in (1b).