Basic English Grammar with Exercises

Exercise 9

b DP

D'

D^0 NP

e AP N'

one N^0 PP

e P'

P^0 DP

of DP D'

D' D^0 NP

D^0 NP ’s N'

the N' N^0

N^0 books

children

Exercise 9

Meaning 1:

Jane wanted to try on a pair of jeans which was in the shop window.

Meaning 2:

Jane wanted to try it on in the shop window.

One of the constituency tests which you can chose from is pseudo-clefting. A

pseudo-clefted sentence is like that in (1).

(1) What .... is/was [XP ...].

In (1) the string following the auxiliary is always a phrase. If we apply this test to

the sentence Jane wanted to try on a pair of jeans in the shop window, we get the

following results in meaning 1:

(2) a. *What Jane wanted to try on in the shop window was [a pair of jeans].

b. What Jane wanted to try on was [a pair of jeans in the shop window].

In meaning 1, the sentence in (2a) is ill-formed. This means that the string a pair of

jeans is no phrase. (2b) is a well-formed sentence, thus the string of words a pair of