Chapter 3 - Basic Concepts of Syntactic TheoryWhether it precedes or follows the complement, the head is the central element of
the phrase and is a word of the same category as the X'. Thus, if the head is an
adjective, the X' will be an A' and if the head is a complementiser the X' will be a C'.
Here are some structures that conform to this pattern:
(3) V' N' P' D'
V PP N PP P DP D NP
speak to me king of Spain on the right the shame of it
Note that, although these are constituents of different types, they all have a very
similar pattern: the head is on the left and the complement is on the right. This is
exactly what the X-bar rules were proposed to account for. It is clearly the case that
there are cross-categorial generalisations to be made and if constituents were described
by the rewrite rules of the kind given in chapter 2, where for each type of constituent
there is a specific rule, it would be impossible to capture obvious similarities between
phrases.
The rule in (1b) is the specifier rule, as it introduces a structural position called the
specifier (the YP of this rule). The structure it defines is as below:
(4) XP
YP X'
Again there are several things to note about this structure. Once more, there are two
immediate constituents of the phrase. The specifier, a phrase of any category, precedes
the X', the constituent just discussed containing the head and the complement. Again
the ordering of these two constituents is language dependent: specifiers precede X's in
English, but this is not necessarily so in all languages. Specifiers are a little more
difficult to exemplify than complements due to complications that we have yet to
discuss. However, the following are fairly straightforward cases:
(5) DP VP
DP D' DP V'
the king’s every wish the bubbles rise to the surface
The specifier of the DP is the possessor and this precedes the D' constituted of the
determiner and its complement. The VP in (5) is exemplified in the following
sentence:
(6) we watched [the bubbles rise to the surface]
This VP has many things in common with a clause and indeed it looks very much like
one. We will discuss the difference between the two in a subsequent chapter. The
important point to note is that the theme argument of the verb (the argument
undergoing the process described by the verb – in this case, the bubbles) occupies the
specifier position of the VP as defined by the rule in (1b).