Glossary
A-movement: argument-movement, the syntactically motivated movement of
arguments from argument positions to argument positions. The Case-
motivated movement of DPs in passive and raising structures is a
typical example for this movement type. See also A'-movement.
A'-movement: A-bar movement, non-argument movement, the movement of
arguments or non-arguments to non-argument positions, e.g. wh-
movement or focus fronting.
abstract Case: being Case-marked is assumed to be a universal property of overt
nominal expressions. Whenever there is no visible marking, we assume
there to be invisible Case on the given nominal expression.
abstract light verb: the head position of a vP can be occupied by a
phonetically empty light verb.
accusative Case: the case of DPs appearing after verbs, prepositions and visible
subjects of infinitival clauses. In English it is visible only on certain
pronouns, e.g. him/her.
active voice: a structure with no passivisation, where the subject of the clause
does not originate in the object position but in the specifier position of
the vP. Compare with passive voice, see also voice.
adjacency: according to traditional analyses Case assigner and Case assignee must
be adjacent, next to each other. This accounts for why the sentence *Mary
speaks fluently English is ungrammatical.
adjective: a constituent with the feature composition: [+N, +V, –F] modifying
nouns, e.g. mad in mad cow. These constituents cannot have nominal
complements, their semantically nominal complement must appear as a
Prepositional Phrase with the rescue strategy of of-insertion.
adjective phrase (AP): a phrase headed by an adjective. In the complement
position we can find PPs and finite and non-finite CPs. DPs and
exceptional clauses are excluded since adjectives are not Case
assigners. APs are complements of DegPs.
adjunct: a constituent not selected by a head.
adjunct rule: one of the three rules of X-bar theory, a recursive rule of the form
Xn Æ Xn, Y/YP
This rule states that an adjunct can be adjoined to the head, the
intermediate projection or the maximal projection. Heads can be
adjoined to heads, phrases can be adjoined to the intermediate or maximal
projection.
The constituent an adjunct is adjoined to is doubled. The comma in the rule
indicates that the order of the two constituents is not fixed.